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ROBERT BROWNING 



ARTHUR WAUGH 




BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

MDCCCC 



PEEPACE. 

This brief Life of Browning is a minia- 
ture, not a panel portrait. Many of the 
qualities which a larger canvas might secure 
are, necessarily, lost to it; but, within the 
limits of a miniature, it seeks at least clear- 
ness and colour. 

It would be difficult to enumerate all the 
hooks tJmt have been gratefully consulted by 
the writer, since he has tried to make him- 
self acquainted with most of what has been 
written of Robert Browning. The fore- 
most debt is, naturally, oived to Mrs. Suth- 
erland Orr, the next to the u Letters of 
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 11 The bibliography at the end 
of the volume gives some idea of the chief 
among other obligations. 

Apart from these, the writer has endeav- 
oured to give a picture, not only of the 
man, but of his surroundings, and to indi- 
cate concisely, but definitely, the relation in 
which Browning stood to the literary move- 
ments of his time. 



viii PEEFACE 

But the primary object of the book is, of 
course, to lead the reader to the Poems 
themselves. We use a rushlight in the 
shadow; but, when once ice are in the 
sun, tee can see the worWs beauty for 
ourselves. 

A. W. 
Hampstead, Christmas, 1809. 



CHRONOLOGY. 

1812 
May 7. Robert Browning born. 

1822-26 (about) 
Browning at Mr. Ready's School, Cam- 
berwell. 

1826 
Browning studying at home under a 
private tutor. 

1830 
Attended Greek lectures at London Uni- 
versity. 

1838 
Pauline published. Browning travelled 
in Russia. 

1834 
Contributions to Monthly Repository, ed- 
ited by W. J. Fox. 

1835 
Paracelsus published. The Brownings 
moved to Hatcham. 

November 27. Browning met Macready. 
December 31. Browning met Forster (at 
Macready' s). 



x CHROXOLOGY 

1836 
Macready conimissionecl Strafford. 

1837 
May 1. Strafford produced at Covent 
Garden, and published. 

1838 
Browning travelled on the Continent. 

1840 
Sordello published. 

1841 
Plppa Passes published (Bells and 
Pomegranates, I.;. 

1842 
King Victor and King Charles published 
(Bells and Pomegranates, II. ). Dramatic 
Lyrics (Bells and Pomegranates, III.). 

1843 
The Eeturn of the Druses (Bells and 
Pomegranates, IV.). 
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon published 
(Bells and Pomegranates, V.) and pro- 
duced at Drury Lane. 



CHEONOLOGY xi 

1844 
Browning travelled in Italy. Colombe's 
Birthday published (Bells and Pomegran- 
ates, VI.)- Elizabeth Barrett's Poems 
published. 

1845 
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (Bells 
and Pomegranates, VII.). Browning 
met Elizabeth Barrett. 

1846 
Luria and A SouVs Tragedy published 
(Bells and Pomegranates, VIII. ). 
September 12. Browning and Elizabeth 
Barrett married. 

1847-49 
The Brownings in Florence and Italy. 

1849 
March 9. Browning's son born. 

1850 
Christmas Eve and Easter Day published. 

1851 
Casa Guidi Windows published. 



xii CHRONOLOGY 

1852 
Browning's Introductory Preface to 
Shelley's Letters published. 

1855 
Men and Women published. 

1856 
Aurora Leigh published. 

1860 
Poems before Congress published. 

1861 
June 29. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
died. 

Browning removed to London (Warwick 
Crescent). 

1864 
Dramatis Personal published. 

1868 
The Ring and the Book published. 

1871 
Balaustiorfs Adventure published, also 
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 



CHEO^OLOGY xiii 

1872 
Fifine at the Fair published. 

1873 
Bed Cotton Night- cap Country published. 

1875 
Aristophanes 1 Apology and The Inn Album 
published. 

1876 
Pacchiarotto and Other Poems published. 

1877 
Translation of the Agamemnon of JEs- 
chylus published. 

1878 
La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic 
published. 

1879 
Dramatic Idyls (first series) published. 
Browning received degree of LL.D. at 
Cambridge. 

1880 
Dramatic Idyls (second series) published. 

1882 
Browning received degree of D.C.L. at 
Oxford. 



ROBERT BROWNING. 

I. 

Except a man have history at his 
finger-tips, a date, taken by itself, is 
apt to be cold and unsuggestive. One 
reads and repeats glibly that Robert 
Browning was born upon the 7th ,of 
May, 1812 ; but nowadays, when tastes 
and fashions pass so quickly, one needs 
something more than a collocation of 
figures to carry the imagination back 
over an interval of nearly ninety years. 
Still, books are, fortunately, of longer 
life than fashions ; and, when we try to 
recall the literary atmosphere of the past, 
the horizon lightens at once. On the 
May morning when the little house in 
Camberwell was happy for the birth of 
a first-born, the first part of Byron 7 s 
Childe Harold, published three months 
before, was still the talk of the town. 
While the future author of Paracelsus 



2 EOBEET BEOWNING 

was not yet a year old, Jane Austen's 
Pride and Prejudice made its first ap- 
pearance at the booksellers', after nearly 
twenty years of wandering among neg- 
lectful publishers ; Crabbe published 
his Tales in Verse; James and Horace 
Smith, their Rejected Addresses; Heber's 
Poems and Translations were first col- 
lected into a volume ; and Samuel 
Eogers's Poems were lying hot from the 
press on every drawing-room table. At 
that time Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Sir Walter Scott were all between forty 
and fifty years old. Lamb was thirty- 
seven. The Curse of Kehama was a com- 
paratively new book, and the Quarterly 
Review had issued but thirteen numbers. 
Among those whose names were to be 
great in literature, Tennyson was not 
three years old, Thackeray but a few 
months, Dickens even fewer, and Eliza- 
beth Barrett herself, if we take the 
Coxhoe date as authoritative, had just 
passed her sixth birthday. These, it is 



EOBEET BROWNING 3 

true, are only a few among many of the 
names of the period ; but they give a 
certain atmosphere. They carry us back 
to a different London, — to what one may 
almost call a remote Camberwell, full 
of gardens and glades, acacia-trees, and 
the song of birds. 

It was in Southampton Street, Cam- 
berwell, that Robert Browning was born, 
the first child of his parents. His father, 
after whom the son was named, bore in 
turn the same name as his father. The 
poet's grandfather, as various testimo- 
nies agree, was an able, vigorous man of 
business. At the time of the poet's 
birth he had risen to a position of au- 
thority in the Bank of England, where 
he had worked assiduously for forty- 
three years. He was now over sixty, 
had married a second wife, who had 
given him a large family, and who was 
a somewhat hard ruler at home. He 
was well-to-do, however, and, except for 
the gout, had few anxieties. The poet's 



4 ROBERT BROWNING 

father had been less fortunate. The 
stepmother had proved a burden. She 
objected to the son of the first wife en- 
joying any privilege which was likely to 
be denied to her own children. She had 
prevented him from going to the univer- 
sity, and may have had something to 
do with the father's peremptory refusal, 
when the boy begged to be trained as an 
artist. At any rate, he, too, was sent 
into the bank, married a Miss Wiede- 
mann in 1811, settled in Camberwell, 
and a year later became the father of the 
third and great Robert Browning, the 
poet. 

The traditions of a hard boyhood are 
apt to descend from father to son. We 
are all inclined to mete out to others 
the measure which we have ourselves 
received. But Robert Browning' s father 
was of humaner spirit. A kinder or 
more thoughtful parent has rarely ex- 
isted ; and it was by his genial influence, 
as Mrs. Orr points out, that the child's 



EOBERT BROWNING 5 

early inclination for poetry was fostered. 
The father had a great gift for verse- 
niaking, and used to teach the boy hard 
facts, and even Latin declensions, by the 
use of a rhyming memoria technica. He 
was, moreover, an excellent reader, and 
fond of reading aloud to his children. 
A better training for certain elementary 
aspects of a poetical temperament it 
would be difficult to imagine. 

It is not uninteresting, when we re- 
flect how closely Browning and Tenny- 
son were to be allied in later life, and 
how pre-eminently the two names stand 
out in the poetry of their generation, to 
contrast the early associations of the two 
children. It is told of Tennyson, as 
every one now knows, that, when he was 
yet in frocks, he ran down the shady 
garden path at Somersby, carried along 
by the spring gale, and crying, "I hear 
a voice that's speaking in the wind." 
This, it has often been remarked, was 
his first line of poetry. It is also re- 



6 EOBEET BBOWNING 

corded of Browning that, while he was 
yet so short that his hands could only 
just reach the edge of the table, he used 
to march round it, shouting out metrical 
lines, and emphasising the measure with 
the movement of his hands. The two 
stories point the contrast in themselves. 
And a little later, while Tennyson was 
roaming at will about Holywell Glen, 
reading his favourite classics in the open 
air, the young Browning was trudging 
to and from London University, along 
noisy, crowded streets, with Dulwich 
Wood on a holiday for his wildest coun- 
try. It is scarcely strange that talents 
so differently fostered should have found 
their first issues, the one in a love so 
pre-eminently akin to nature, the other 
in a sympathy so peculiarly human. 
The first associations of Tennyson were 
leaves and brooks ; but, from the begin- 
ning, Browning's life was centred among 
men and women. 

In one thing the boys' fortunes were 



ROBERT BROWNING 7 

allied : each found in his mother a kind 
and homely influence. Not much is 
recorded of Browning's mother, but all 
that is told of her speaks of true mater- 
nity. She was musical ; and from her 
the poet derived that love of music, 
which, though it is not always implicit 
in his verse, was invariably an influence 
in his life. Moreover, she was poign- 
antly religious ; and, as a boy, Brown- 
ing took his spiritual inspiration entirely 
from her. His home life was so happy 
that, when first he went to school as 
a weekly boarder, the separation was 
almost more than the child could bear. 
The school, which was in the neigh- 
bourhood, was kept by the Rev. Thomas 
Ready, whose sisters superintended a 
preparatory department, to which Robert 
was at first admitted. It does not ap- 
pear that his school- days were of more 
than ordinary effect in his education. 
He learnt there the usual accomplish- 
ments, but the books that he especially 



8 KOBEET BROWNING 

loved were the books which he found 
at home. Of these Mrs. Orr gives a 
very interesting list. Among the fa- 
vourites were Quarles's Emblems, of which 
his father possessed a seventeenth- cen- 
tury edition, often pored over by the 
boy, and even scrawled upon in crude, 
wandering characters. He was particu- 
larly fond of history, and read the 
Letters of Junius and the works of 
Voltaire while yet a boy. For poetry 
he had Milton and Byron ; and, like the 
young Tennyson, he fell immediately 
under the spell of the latter. His early 
verses, like the Poems by Two Brothers, 
were full of Byronic imitation. Nor 
were these merely disconnected essays 
in verse ; for, by the time he was twelve, 
he had actually produced a volume of 
poems, for which there was some idea, 
or even, as Mrs. Orr seems to imply, 
some direct attempt, to find a publisher. 
The scheme fell through, however ; and 
the young poet was left, as was best, to 



ROBERT BROWNING 9 

write for the few private friends to 
whom he showed his manuscripts. No 
doubt it is always the case that certain 
poetic impulses pass, like waves, across 
the country, overwhelming, as it were, 
all the young minds that they encounter. 
Still, it is unusually interesting to find 
Browning, like Tennyson, passing from 
the influence of Byron directly to that 
of Shelley. Mr. William Sharp, in his 
monograph in the Great Writers series, 
relates that it was the sight of a volume 
on a bookstall, labelled "Mr, Shelley's 
Atheistical Poem: Very Scarce," that 
first aroused Browning's curiosity con- 
cerning a poet of whom he then knew 
nothing. He at once begged his mother 
to get him a complete set of Shelley's 
works, which, with some difficulty, she 
succeeded in doing. Their influence 
upon him was instantaneous ; and for 
the next few years Shelley was the one 
poet of his affections. Nor was Browning 
the man to drift from an allegiance once 



10 KOBEET BKOWNING 

given. For Shelley lie always retained 
an undiminished admiration ; while of 
Byron he wrote in the year of his 
marriage : — 

I always retained my first feeling for Byron 
in many respects. ... I would at any time have 
gone to Finchley to see a curl of his hair or one 
of his gloves, I am sure; while Heaven knows 
that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to 
cross the room, if at the other end of it all 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were con- 
densed into the little china bottle yonder, after 
the Rosicrucian fashion ! 

While he was undergoing these poetic 
influences, Bobert Browning left Mr. 
Beady' s school, and settled down at 
home under a private tutor. His stud- 
ies were many-sided ; but poetry, as was 
inevitable, absorbed his keenest ener- 
gies. As time went on, it became more 
and more evident that his ambitions 
were tending solely in the one direction. 
Various professions, among which diplo- 
macy was most attractive to him, were 
suggested, only to be dropped ; and, 



EOBEET BBOWNETO 11 

shortly after lie liad begun to attend 
lectures at University College, he was 
encouraged to discuss with his father 
the idea of embracing literature as a 
career. He seems to have entered upon 
it with no extravagant expectations 
of recompense, but at the same time 
without any harassing apprehension. 
Years afterward, in writing to Eliza- 
beth Barrett, he gave a very intimate 
reflection of the prospects with which he 
set out : — 

My whole scheme of life [he said] (with its 
wants, material wants at least, closely cut 
down) was long ago calculated; and it sup- 
posed you — the finding such an one as you — ut- 
terly impossible, because, in calculating, one 
goes upon chances, not on providence. How 
could 1 expect you? So for my own future 
way in the world I have always refused to 
care. 

It is probable, too, that the poet's 
father, having himself been thwarted in 
the course of life upon which he had set 
his heart, was not the man to place ob- 



12 ROBERT BROWNING 

stacles in the way of his son's better 
fortune. At any rate, before he was 
twenty, Robert Browning was devoted 
to the literary life, and hard at work at 
the poem which he afterward described 
as ' ' the little book I first printed as a 
boy," — the little book of which John 
Stuart Mill wrote, "The writer pos- 
sesses a deeper self-consciousness than I 
ever knew in a sane human being. ' ' 

Mill was in part right and in part 
wrong ; for the Browning of that first 
11 little book" was a Browning who had 
been reading Shelley for months as a 
prelude to original poetry, and much of 
the self- consciousness was, in a sense, 
imitative or dramatic. But the book 
itself was Pauline, and its publication 
was the first-fruits of a poetic genius 
that will live as long as the English 
language. 






II. 

Although Browning did not lack 
that moderate measure of self-confidence 
which is necessary to artistic activity, he 
seems to have been somewhat diffident 
when it came to the printing of his first 
finished volume. For, though he knew 
that his parents were full of sympathy 
and interest, it was to his aunt that he 
first confided his ambition ; and it was 
she — good, kindly lady — who promised 
to provide the money required for pub- 
lication. Saunders and Otley undertook 
the task of publishers ; and Browning's 
benefactress paid a bill for some forty 
pounds for the slim volume of seventy 
pages, of which few copies are now 
known to survive. Years afterward, 
when Browning heard of the sale of a 
copy at one of those fancy prices dear to 
the bibliophile, he wished that his aunt 
had been living to see that a single copy 



14 ROBERT BROWNING 

of the once neglected ' ' little book ' ' was 
now worth a sum very little less than 
the whole edition had originally cost to 
print and bind. Habent sua fata libelli I 
Pauline was published in January, 1833, 
a month later than Tennyson's volume 
of Poems which bears the same date. 
The year of its appearance was of more 
than common interest to English litera- 
ture. It saw the Last Essays of Elia col- 
lected from the London Magazine, and 
with them the close of Lamb's gentle 
and humane career. Within the same 
twelve months Fraser began to print 
Carlyle's wonderful Sartor Resartus. In 
September Arthur Hallam died ; and 
Tennyson, overwhelmed by grief, en- 
tered upon his ten years' silence. More- 
over, while Pauline was still fresh upon 
Otley's shelves, Elizabeth Barrett pub- 
lished her Translation of Prometheus 
Bound, so that the names of the three 
poets who were to render Victorian 
poetry illustrious come together in the 



ROBERT BROWNING 15 

bibliography at the outset. Viewed in 
the perspective of nearly seventy years, 
1833 seems a year of great events and 
greater promises. 

At the time, however, no citadel was 
carried by storm ; and Pauline made but 
a quiet appearance in the arena. The 
most conspicuous notice it received was, 
indeed, the result of a friendship already 
established. It will be remembered that, 
at the age of twelve, Browning had com- 
pleted a manuscript of verse, which had 
been handed about among the friends of 
his family. Among the most "influen- 
tial" of these was W. J. Fox, the Unita- 
rian minister, a man of quick literary 
perception and a very genial capacity for 
praising promise. He had spoken well 
of the verses ; and Browning, having now 
something more definite to show him, 
hastened to submit a copy of Pauline to 
his criticism. The letter which accom- 
panied the parcel is amusingly boyish, 
both in its rather stilted protestation of 



16 ROBEET BROWNING 

modesty (from which a certain confi- 
dence may yet be seen peeping), and in 
its naive confession that the author sends 
the volume, " having either heard or 
dreamed that you contribute to the 
Westminster. ' ' But Fox was man enough 
to feel for the boy, and kindly critic 
enough to write a very eulogistic notice 
for the Monthly Repository, of which he 
was editor. "The poem," he said, 
"laid hold of us with the power, the 
sensation of which has never yet failed 
us as a test of genius. ' ' 

In later years Browning expressed a 
quite disproportionate distaste for this 
first literary bantling of his. Every one 
knows the preface of 1867, in which he 
declares that he preserves the poem 
under protest and to forestall the print- 
ing of uncorrected transcripts, adding 
that "good draughtsmanship and right 
handling were at that time far beyond 
the artist." Readers of his letters to 
Elizabeth Barrett will also remember 



EOBEET BEOWNISTG 17 

with how much hesitation and delay he 
excuses himself from sending her a copy 
of the poem. . . . " Will you and must 
you have Pauline f If I could pray you 
to revoke that decision. For it is alto- 
gether foolish and not boy-like. It 
is unluckily precocious," and so forth 
with much reiteration. Critics, however, 
have rightly agreed to see more in the 
"crab of the shapely Tree of Life in his 
FooV s Paradise ' ' than the poet could him- 
self discern ; and Pauline remains inter- 
esting and valuable for many reasons. 
It is no part of this little sketch to be 
minutely analytic ; but it will be at once 
apparent to the careful student, as it was 
to Fox, that Pauline could only be the 
first step in a career of genius. It is by 
no means typically Browningesque, for 
the tendency to splendour and colour, 
which Fox noticed with apprehension, 
was to fade out with the fading influence 
of Shelley ; but it was at once suggestive 
of Browning's future strength, in being 



18 KOBEBT BBOWKING 

"one of those utterances of imaginary 
persons, not mine/' which were to de- 
velop in time into the dramatic fulness 
of The Ring and the Booh. Its principal 
interest, however, is not so much dra- 
matic as personal. When Mill remarked 
upon the deep self- consciousness of the 
writer, he touched perhaps nearer to 
truth than he knew j for there are pas- 
sages in it that are confessedly autobi- 
ographical, and that give us, more 
clearly than all the analysis of all the 
Browning societies, a glimpse into the 
character of the Browning of the time. 

I am made up of an intensest life, 
Of a most clear idea of consciousness 
Of self, distinct from all its qualities, 
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers- 
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: 
But linked, in me, to self-supremacy, 
Existing as a centre to all things, 
Most potent to create and rule and call 
Upon all things to minister to it ; 
And to a principle of restlessness 
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, 
feel, all — 



EOBEET BROWNING 19 

This is myself ; and I should thus have been 
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul. 

He goes on to say that this grasp upon 
the sensuous faculties, this restlessness 
for knowledge, is transfigured in him by 
imagination, which 

Has been a very angel, coming not 
In fitf id visions, but beside me ever 
And never failing me ; so, though my mind 
Forgets not, not a shred of life forgets, 
Yet I can take a secret pride in calling 
The dark past up to quell it regally. 

Added to these, and beckoning him, is 
the lode-star lighted in him by his 
mother's love, 
A need, a trust, a yearning after God : 



... I saw God everywhere ; 
And I can only lay it to the fruit 
Of a sad after-time that I could doubt 
Even his being— e'en the while I felt 
His presence, never acted from myself, 
Still trusted in a hand to lead me through 
All danger ; and this feeling ever fought 
Against my weakest reason and resolve. 

Inquiry into a man's religious belief is 



20 EOBEET BKOWBTING 

apt to degenerate into an impertinence, 
but so much is here definitely said by 
Browning himself that it may not be out 
of place to say a little more, towards the 
better understanding of the man, no less 
than of the poet. 

Baptized at an Independent Chapel, 
and brought up among devout surround- 
ings, the boy Browning was pre-emi- 
nently religious with the easy orthodoxy 
of childhood. His mother's gift of Shel- 
ley's poetry seems to have had a some- 
what disturbing influence. It was then 
that doubt was first presented to his 
mind in a tangible form ; and a nat- 
ural reaction followed. It is to this 
period that the passage in Pauline refers. 
Mrs. Orr tells us that, in the first years 
of manhood, Browning showed a ten- 
dency to become assertive and wayward. 
Increasing knowledge and the sense of 
talent in him grew restless under re- 
straint, and the things that had pleased 
him pleased him no more. The mood 



EOBEET BEOWNING 21 

passed, — passed more quickly in him 
than in most. It left him with a settled 
confidence in immortality and in the 
continuity of spiritual activity, but the 
follower of no hard-and-fast sect or doc- 
trine. "The truth/ 7 his wife wrote to 
him a few weeks before their mar- 
riage,— 

the truth, as God sees it, must be something so 
different from these opinions about truth, these 
systems which fit different classes of men like 
their coats, and wear brown at their elbows 
always ! . . . I believe in what is divine, and 
floats at highest in all these different theologies. 
... I could pray anywhere,— with all sorts of 
worshippers, from the Sistine Chapel to Mr. 
Fox's, those kneeling and those standing. 

To which Browning replies : — 

I know your very meaning in what you say of 
religion, and responded to it with my whole 
soul. What you express now is for us both. 
Those are my feelings, my convictions beside, 
— instinct confirmed by reason. 

This much by way of digression, that 
we may go forward with some sort of 
idea of Browning's attitude to life at the 



22 EOBEET BBOWNING 

moment of his first entry upon the liter- 
ary stage. No doubt the mere sense of 
performance, the daily interest of work 
maturing, of self realised, would do much 
to dissipate the restlessness that so often 
accompanies unwilling inaction. The 
man with the sense in him of things to 
do, and the torment of the inability to 
do them, is never happy or at one with 
himself. From henceforth Browning 
was to be always active, always strenuous. 
There were other reviews of Pauline, 
but of no great importance. The book, 
naturally enough, did not sell. At a 
time when Tennyson, though "popular 
at Cambridge," as Moxon with uncon- 
scious humour remarked, had still a 
public of no more than three hundred 
purchasers, it was hardly likely that 
Browning, with no university friends to 
help him, would be popular in the com- 
mon sense. In the year of his marriage 
he had still a whole i l bale of sheets ' ' of 
Pauline, stowed away at the top of the 



EOBEET BROWNING 23 

house. But the publication of the book 
attracted attention to its author in a 
smaller circle, and may have been in- 
directly responsible for an invitation 
from Mr. Benckhausen, the Eussian 
consul-general, in consequence of which 
Browning, in the winter after that of 
Pauline, spent three months of activity 
in St. Petersburg. His letters describing 
his visit were unfortunately lost ; but the 
careful student of verse will not need to 
be reminded that what he saw in Eussia 
has, in more than one of his poems, 
touched his descriptions with actuality. 
He returned to London, and settled 
down again to poetry. Some isolated 
lyrics (one of them now enshrined in 
Pi/ppa Passes) were printed in Mr. Fox's 
Repository ; but the greater part of his 
time was given to the preparation of a 
highly ambitious poem, the subject of 
which had been suggested to him by his 
friend, the Count Amedee de Eipert- 
Monclar. This young Frenchman was, 



24 EOBEET BEOWNING 

Mrs. Orr tells us, staying in England as 
a private agent of communication be- 
tween the royal exiles and their friends 
in France ; and he and Browning, hav- 
ing many tastes in common, became firm 
friends. He was an artist, too, and 
painted an excellent portrait of the poet. 
The idea for Paracelsus was given to 
Browning in the early autumn after his 
return from Eussia ; and he must have 
worked hard, for by the middle of April 
the manuscript was complete, and offered 
to a publisher. Mr. Moxon declined to 
bring it out, although Browning's father 
was ready to pay the cost of publication ; 
and, after failing to come to terms with 
the publishers of Pauline, the poet at 
last intrusted the manuscript to Mr. 
Effingham Wilson, who had a consider- 
able following of poets. Fox was a 
friend of Wilson's, and, having been in 
the poet's confidence throughout his 
business transactions, seems to have 
helped in persuading the publisher to 



EOBERT BROWNING 25 

undertake Paracelsus. Indeed, it should 
never be forgotten that Browning owed 
almost all his early encouragement to 
Fox's warm yet judicious friendship. 
The letters which passed between them 
at this anxious period of the poet's career 
show that Fox was the first to whom 
Browning turned instinctively for criti- 
cism and advice. 

With the publication of Paracelsus, 
however, the field of his acquaintance 
was to be enlarged. At first the book 
fell flat. Talfourd's Ion was among the 
new books of the season ; and Browning 
could not help feeling somewhat ag- 
grieved, not only by the fact that Tal- 
fourd enjoyed columns of praise to his 
own lines of condemnation, but, as he 
afterwards put it, with a touch of hu- 
mour, that 

in the same column often would follow a most 
laudatory notice of an Elementary French 
book, on a new plan, which I " did" for my old 
French master, and he published. That was 
really an useful work. 



26 EOBEKT BKOWKING 

The Athenaeum gave to Paracelsus but 
three lines, "not without talent, but 
spoiled by obscurity and only an imita- 
tion of Shelley ' ' ; and the flock of little 
papers followed the lead, until Brown- 
ing and his publisher scarcely knew 
whether to laugh or weep at the una- 
nimity of the verdicts pasted in Wilson's 
book of Press Notices. Fox, it is true, 
was once more friendly. But his notice 
in the Monthly Repository was one upon 
which the poet, knowing his view be- 
forehand, could always depend j and the 
combined condemnation of all the un- 
known critics was beginning to discour- 
age him. Then one morning there ap- 
peared in the Examiner a discriminating, 
judicial review of Paracelsus, mingling 
praise and blame, but treating the work 
from the highest standpoint, and pro- 
nouncing it, after all that criticism 
could say, to be a work of brilliant 
promise and real power. This review, 
so clearly unbiassed and unprompted, at 



EOBEET BKOWXIXG 27 

once introduced the book to the wider 
public, — so far as the public that cares 
for pure literature can ever be described 
as wide j and a copy of Paracelsus found 
its way to the shaded room of a delicate 
young lady, who read eagerly every 
new volume of reputable poetry and had 
herself already given promise of uncom- 
mon performance. She read it, and felt 
at once that it was ' ' the expression of a 
new mind ' ' ; and she differed from the 
common herd of literary amateurs in 
that she did not share their galling 
preference for Ion. The lady was Eliza- 
beth Barrett ; and the critic who first 
gave Browning conspicuous praise in a 
literary journal of the first grade was 
Jolin Forster, then as utterly unknown 
to him as his own future wife, but hence- 
forth to be one of his most trusted and 
valued friends. 



in. 

It was, however, before he met For- 
ster that Browning made an acquaint- 
ance which was to exercise a predomi- 
nant influence over the next few years 
of his life. On the 27th of November, 
1835, Macready was dining in Bays- 
water with Browning' s ' ' literary father, ' 7 
W. J. Fox ; and the poet was asked to 
u drop in ' > after dinner. It was, in 
many senses, a psychological moment 
for such a meeting. Macready was in 
a very unsettled and dissatisfied state of 
mind. During the spring of that year 
he had taken an expensive travelling 
company, of whom he expected much, 
into the West of England, and had 
played to very poor houses with a de- 
pressing effect upon his exchequer. On 
his return to London, he had joined 
Alfred Bunn's company at Drury Lane 
for the winter season, and had played 



ROBERT BROWNING 29 

during October several of his favourite 
parts, including Macbeth, Othello, 
Hamlet, and Hotspur, but again without 
influencing the returns of the box office 
so largely as Bunn had hoped. A 
drama by Planche was tried as an 
experiment ; and Macready, who had 
retained a veto upon the parts he was to 
play, declined to appear in it. By the 
law of contraries the new piece proved a 
prodigious success, and Macready found 
himself shelved. He was, of course, paid 
his salary ; but he was "out of the bill," 
and there is no doubt that the situation 
annoyed him. It was just the time 
when he would be looking out for a man 
of talent to write him a play worthy of 
his powers ; and he and Browning could 
scarcely have met under more favour- 
able circumstances. It is at least 
certain that the meeting was cordial. 
Browning was just beginning to feel his 
feet, and his general address was ex- 
tremely prepossessing. Enough of the 



30 ROBERT BROWNING 

boyish confidence remained to give him 
ease and spirit in conversation, while at 
the same time he had matured in man- 
ner and bearing. His appearance, 
moreover, was highly in his favour. 
He dressed well, was dark, slender, 
and handsome ; and Macready noted in 
his diary that his "face was full of in- 
telligence." They parted with mutual 
promises for an early meeting j and 
Browning at once sent his new friend a 
copy of Paracelsus. Within a very few 
days Macready found time to read it, 
and his admiration for the writer was 
increased. 

A work of great daring, starred with poetry 
of thought, feeling, and diction, but occasionally 
obscure. The writer can scarcely fail to be a 
leading spirit of his time. 

Such was the criticism confided to the 
actor's diary. A few weeks later 
Browning was invited to see the old 
year out at Macready' s place at Elstree. 
When the North London Coach was 



EOBEET BROWNING 31 

making ready at the "Blue Posts" on 
that New Year's Eve, two young men 
among the waiting passengers passed and 
repassed each other on the pavement, 
stamping out the cold in exercise. Each 
suspected that the other might be going 
to the Elstree party ; but, with charac- 
teristic British reticence, neither spoke 
until the two were introduced in the 
lighted drawing-room. Then they found 
that they were already known and 
grateful to one another j for one was 
Browning, and the other Forster. They 
were exactly of an age ; and, by way of 
cementing the introduction, Forster 
remarked, "Did you see a little notice 
of you I wrote in the Examiner ? ' ' He 
could scarcely have brought a better 
claim to the poet's gratitude, for the 
Examiner review had been the most 
helpful that Browning had yet received. 
Little wonder that the poet felt among 
friends, and that he "won opinions 
from all present" by his bright and en- 
thusiastic talk of men and books. 



32 EOBEET BROWNING 

This evening must have been set in 
golden letters in Browning's calendar, 
but it by no means stood alone. For, 
although Paracelsus was not a pub- 
lishers' success, it served to make his 
name known in the inner circles of men 
of letters. About this time the Brown- 
ing family moved to Hatcham, where 
other relatives joined them $ and in one 
house and another Browning's name 
began to be familiar. He met Richard 
Hengist Home, Leigh Hunt, Bryan Wal- 
ler Procter, Monckton Milnes, Talfourd, 
and many others, and upon one of his 
visits to Elstree was introduced to 
Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, the Eye- 
bright of Sordello, who became one of^ 
his dearest friends, and to whom he 
used to turn for criticism and advice in 
the portrayal of his female characters. 
Whether Macready at once suggested 
to Browning that he should write him 
a play is not clear, but it is fairly certain 
that the idea had formed itself vaguely 



ROBERT BROWNING 33 

in the poet's Hiind long before any actual 
arrangement was made. Within a few 
weeks of the evening at Elstree, Brown- 
ing and Forster called on the great actor, 
and the conversation turned upon the 
stage. Planche's Jewess had had its 
run ; and Macready was on the boards 
again, starting in February with Othello. 
Browning had been to Drury Lane to 
see him, and was so much impressed 
that he could not rest until he had told 
his friend of his admiration. Then, in 
the course of talk, he mentioned a 
drama which he himself had in mind, — 
a tragedy, Warses, which in the whirligig 
of fortune came to nothing. But Mac- 
ready was pleased with the idea, and it 
worked in his mind to some purpose. 

Meanwhile things came to a head at 
Drury Lane. Enraged by what he con- 
sidered Buna's slighting treatment of 
him, Macready — on a night in April 
when he had been obliged to play three 
acts of Bichard III. as the first part of 



34 EOBEET BKOWNING 

a sort of variety programme — dashed 
from the stage in an itching fury, and, 
seeing Bunn's office door open, inconti- 
nently thrashed him on the spot. It was 
a squalid fight, unfortunately, and ended 
in the law courts ; but it had the effect 
of transferring Macready to Covent 
Garden and Osbaldiston's management, 
where for the first time he was associated 
with Miss Helen Faucit, the partner of 
his greatest successes, and the leading 
lady in the dramas which Browning was 
to write for him. It was there that on 
the 26th of May, 1836, the author's birth- 
day, Talfourd's Ion was produced with 
complete success j and that evening was 
to seal the connection between Macready 
and Browning. There was a party after- 
wards at Talfourd's, a memorable gath- 
ering. Macready sat between Words- 
worth and Landor, with Browning op- 
posite. Miss Ellen Tree, who had that 
evening played Clemanthe with appro- 
bation, was of the company, besides 



ROBERT BROWNING 35 

Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, and Miss 
Mitford. Macready was (in his own 
words) "tranquilly happy. " The host 
proposed the toast of the English poets, 
and to the surprise of the company, 
whose eyes naturally turned to Words- 
worth, called for a response from "Mr. 
Robert Browning, the youngest of our 
poets." It must have been a nervous 
moment ; but Browning came through it 
admirably, "with grace and modesty." 
As they were descending the stairs, 
Macready detained Browning for a mo- 
ment. "Write me a play," he said, 
"and keep me from going to America." 
The poet was ready with a suggestion. 
"What do you say to Strafford f" he 
replied. And so began a co-operation, 
chequered, indeed, and not without its 
misfortunes, but of the first importance 
to the development of Browning's genius. 
When one remembers the feeling of not 
unworthy irritation with which he had 
watched the critics' praise of Ion a few 



36 BOBEET BBOWKING 

months before, it is not uninteresting to 
reflect that it was upon the occasion of 
its theatrical birthday that Browning 
himself received this first great compli- 
ment, which was to be so fruitful of con- 
sequences in his own career. 

He began work upon the drama almost 
at once, setting aside Sordello> upon 
which he was some way advanced. The 
history of the play was already familiar 
to him, as he had been helping Forster 
in a biographical sketch of Wentworth 
for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. By 
the following March the drama was fin- 
ished, and Macready was delighted with 
it. He put it in rehearsal for his benefit 
upon May Day, and everything seemed 
to be progressing fortunately. Unluckily, 
Osbaldiston's stock company was a very 
poor one. Apart from the stars, Mac- 
ready and Miss Helen Faucit, it was 
composed of hack actors, ignorant be- 
yond belief, several of whom seemed to 
be incapable of getting Browning's mean- 



ROBERT BROWNING 37 

ing drummed into them. As the even- 
ing of performance drew near, Macready 
began to lose confidence ; and, indeed, 
the performance was certainly bad 
enough to destroy its chances. Brown- 
ing himself was fairly satisfied with Mr. 
Yandenhof s Pym j but the Examiner 
thought him ' i positively nauseous, whin- 
ing, drawling, and slouching." Young 
Vane was a u whimpering school-boy" j 
and, as for the king, his performance 
was merely execrable. Despite every 
drawback, however, the play was a com- 
plete success. It was withdrawn on the 
fifth night, owing to Mr. Yandenhof 
leaving the company j but, so long as it 
was played, it met with general appro- 
bation. Macready and Helen Faucit 
acted splendidly, and their spirit seems 
to have carried the piece against the re- 
tarding dulness of the rank and file. 
Browning had no cause to be dissatisfied 
with his first acquaintance with the 
stage. 



38 KOBERT BROWOTNG 

Strafford was published as a book by 
Longmans simultaneously with its per- 
formance ; and it is pleasant to find that 
the first copy upon which Browning 
could lay hands was sent, on the very 
day of performance, to his old friend, 
Fox. Encouraged, no doubt, by the 
fact that the play was to be performed 
so conspicuously, the publishers took it 
up at their own expense ; but the enter- 
prise was unremunerative. Meanwhile 
Browning resumed his interrupted task 
of Bordello. He worked at it through 
the winter and into the spring; and then, 
feeling the need of the southern at- 
mosphere to give colour to the poem, he 
determined to carry it off, and finish it 
in Italy. So with the sunshine he sailed 
for Trieste, the only passenger on a mer- 
chant vessel. On the way out they had 
a strange adventure, sighting a wreck 
which proved to be a smuggler, with a 
crew of dead bodies, drowned beside 
their booty. The ship had been floating 



ROBERT BROWNING 39 

keel upwards for a month under a blaz- 
ing sun. Besides this grisly encounter 
and a heavy storm in the Bay, little hap- 
pened on the outward journey ; but, 
before they reached Trieste, Browning 
had written "How they brought the 
Good News " and "Home Thoughts from 
the Sea," with its picture of the Gibral- 
tar which he was carried upon the deck 
to look at. 

Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Tra- 
falgar lay; 

In the dimmest North-east distance dawned 
Gibraltar grand and grey. 

From Trieste he went to Venice, then 
to Asolo, back to Venice, and thence by 
Verona and the Tyrol to Frankfort and 
Mayence, and home by the Rhine and 
Antwerp. With so many places to see 
it is not surprising that he should have 
done very little towards finishing Soi~- 
detto. It was indeed practically un- 
touched when he returned to London, 
and was not ready for a publisher till 



40 EOBEET BROWNING 

more than a year later. This time the 

trade would not support him sufficiently 

to take risk, and the book was again 

published at his kindly father's charges. 

It is not unlikely that the broken 

fashion in which Sordello was worked 

upon was to a great degree responsible 

for the inherent difficulties of the poem. 

It is obvious that work sustained at full 

course must naturally have more unity 

than work taken up at intervals, and 

that a joined thread has less strength 

than a virgin one. Certainly, one of the 

acutest criticisms of Sordello is Mrs. 

Browning's own : — 

It is like a noble picture with its face to the 
wall or at least in shadow. ... It wants drawing 
together and fortifying in the connections and 
associations, which hang as loosely every here 
and there as those in a dream, and confound 
the reader who persists in thinking himself 
awake. 

This loose hanging of associations is pre- 
cisely what we should expect in work 
that was frequently interrupted, and it 



ROBERT BROWNING 41 

is not without interest that Browning 
should have often had it in his mind to 
reconstruct portions of the poem and 
reconnect its interests. Still, from the 
point of view of the student of poetic 
development, it is more satisfactory to 
have the poem as it stood at first. It 
marks, indeed, the final step in the first 
stage of Browning's intellectual growth. 
Like Pauline and Paracelsus, it is the 
study of an aspiring soul ; and it has in 
common with both the fact that it is 
clearly not without autobiographical 
touches. 

Browning himself, as every dramatic 
poet both before and after him has found 
cause to do, expressly deprecated the 
reading of personal sentiment into what 
was essentially impersonal analysis. But 
the character of Aprile in Paracelsus is 
clearly a reflection of his own aspira- 
tions ; and, indeed, he is understood to 
have accepted the implication. 



42 ROBERT BROWNING 

I would speak [says Aprile] ; no thought which 

ever stirred 
A human breast should be untold ; all passions, 
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir 
Within a heart fed with desires like mine, 
To the last comfort shutting the tired lids 
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away 
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well ; 
And this in language as the need should be, 
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow, 
Now piled up in a grand array of words. 
This done, to perfect and consummate all, 
Even as a luminous haze links star to star, 
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing 
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way 
To be defined save in strange melodies. 

This is clearly, as so mucli else in the 
poem, a forecast of the line upon which 
Browning was steering his course. And 
in SordeUo we already get the dawning 
of a sense of the necessity of selection. 
At first the poet was for portraying 
every emotion $ but, after a first survey, 
he begins to understand the helplessness 
and, indeed, the unprofitableness of so 
comprehensive a scheme. 

A crowd,— he meant 
To take the whole of it ; each part's intent 



EOBERT BKOWNING 43 

Coucerned him therefore; and, the more he 

pried, 
The less became Sordello satisfied. . . . 



Made these the mankind he once raved about ? 
Because a few of them were notable, 
Should all be figured worthy note ? 

There are many such passages, familiar 
to the student, which are of the highest 
interest, but for which space is unfortu- 
nately lacking to an analysis here. They 
show, not only with how keen and sin- 
cere an aspiration Browning adopted 
the literary life, but also how intimately 
he associated himself with these earlier 
creatures of his fancy. The poetic soul 
was naturally the first to attract a poet's 
analysis ; and Sordello is, in a certain 
sense, an enlargement upon the charac- 
ter of Aprile in Paracelsus. But in Sor- 
dello the poet has become more dramatic 
and less personal. With maturity he is 
acquiring more and more the power of 
assuming a cast of thought alien to his 
own. The idea of intellectual and spir- 



44 ROBERT BROWNING 

itual growth is almost always present in 
Browning's dramatic poems ; but with 
So?~dellOj as more than one critic has 
noticed, we emerge from the self-con- 
scious stage of Browning's imagination, 
and his attitude to life becomes alto- 
gether more altruistic. No doubt, the 
practice in formal drama had helped to 
this ; and so the intervention of Strafford 
between portions of SordeUo had more 
than an external effect upon Browning's 
work. In writing directly for the stage, 
he had perforce to assume a deliberately 
dramatic spirit. Introspection was prac- 
tically debarred, and the necessity for 
action and movement became para- 
mount. The result is immediately ap- 
parent in Pippa Passes, the next piece 
of work to engage the poet's attention. 
Here the dramatic touch is at once 
stronger, keener, more vital, than in any 
of the earlier poems. Here the subtle 
sense of motive and effect begins to move 
like a spirit on the face of the waters. 



KOBERT BEOWXING 45 

Here, in a word, Browning begins to 
realise his power. It was, in truth, a 
crucial moment in the poet's career 
when he first encountered the actor's 
influence. 



IV. 

"Sordetto" was the last poem for 
whose publication Browning was in- 
debted to his father's unfailing gener- 
osity. No doubt, the poet, since he was 
always sensitive about such things, was 
anxious to shift for himself. At any rate, 
when he came to turn over a number of 
poems which lay in his desk, he deter- 
mined to do the best he could for them 
on his own behalf. The sequel has been 
told, with characteristic picturesqueness, 
by Mr. Edmund Gosse. Browning went 
to discuss the matter with Moxon ; and 
the publisher told him he was bringing 
out an edition of some of the Elizabethan 
dramatists in a cheap form, and that, if 
Browning cared to print his poems as 
pamphlets, using the type Moxon was 
employing, the cost would be inconsid- 
erable. The poet was pleased with the 
idea ; and it was agreed that each poem 



ROBERT BROWNING 47 

or issue should consist of a sheet of six- 
teen pages, in double column, the entire 
cost of which should not be more than 
fifteen pounds. Such was the beginning 
of Bells and Pomegranates, which ap- 
peared in eight numbers, between 1841 
and 1846. The first was Pippa Passes; 
the second (1842), King Victor and 
King Charles; the third, in the same 
vear, Dramatic Lyrics; the fourth, The 
Return of the Druses (1843); the fifth, 
A Blot in the ' Scutcheon (1843); the 
sixth, Colombe's Birthday (1844); the 
seventh, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics 
(1845); the last, Luria and A Soid's 
Tragedy r , published in the year of Brown- 
ing's marriage, 1846. Pippa Passes was 
originally priced at sixpence ; but, as the 
sale was small, it was increased to a 
shilling, and eventually rested at half 
a crown, which was the price of each 
subsequent number. In this fashion, so 
humble outwardly, a " perfect treasury 
of fine poetry," as Mr. Gosse well calls 



48 ROBERT BROWNING 

it, was presented to the public. The 
title was explained by Browning him- 
self:— 

The Rabbis make Bells and Pomegranates 
symbolical of Pleasure and Profit, the Gay and 
the Grave, the Poetry and the Prose, Singing 
and Sermonising. 

He chose the symbolical phrase as 
being less pretentious than any formal 
explanation ; but in the last number, in 
deference to the suggestion of his wife, 
he printed an explanatory note. The 
original edition of Pippa Passes had 
also a preface, which serves to empha- 
sise the hint made in the last chapter, 
that the dramatic intensity of this new 
burst of poetry was largely due to his 
experience in writing for the stage : — 

Two or three years ago [it ran] I wrote a 
play, about which the chief matter I much care 
to recollect at present is that a Pit-full of 
good-natured people applauded it. Ever since, I 
have been desirous of doing something in the 
same way that should better reward their at- 
tention. What follows I mean for the first of a 



EOBEET BROWNING 49 

series of Dramatical Pieces, to come out at in- 
tervals; and 1 amuse myself by fancying that 
the cheap mode in which they appear will for 
once help me to a sort of Pit-audience again. 



This promise is definite enough, and 
the result is even more so. "With this in- 
comparable series Browning established 
himself in his mature manner, in the 
dramatic portrayal of "so many imag- 
^ary characters" not his own, which 
has rendered him by far the subtlest 
artist in motive that has ever written in 
English, save only Shakespeare. 

In the meanwhile Macready had not 
forgotten him, and was anxious for 
another play. The great actor had 
been experiencing various vicissitudes. 
Weary of the cramping restraint of 
Bunns and Osbaldistons, he had gone 
into management on his own account, 
and had been moving from the Hay- 
market to Covent Garden, and thence to 
Drury Lane, with varying degrees of 
success. In the spring of 1842 he was at 



50 EOBEET BBOWOTNG 

the Haymarket ; and while there he ac- 
cepted for production during his next 
season A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, which 
Browning had just written, designedly for 
him. In the autumn Macready moved 
to Drury Lane, and, in order to make an 
unusual display for the winter season, 
engaged Mrs. Nisbett, the popular comic 
actress, together with Charles Mathews 
and Madame Yestris. Unfortunately, the 
combination failed ; and, by the time that 
Macready was ready to bring out Brown- 
ing's play, the season had involved him 
in serious pecuniary embarrassments. 
Had he told Browning the facts frankly, 
a great deal of trouble would have been 
saved. But Macready was always ab- 
normally sensitive ; and, instead of a 
straightforward statement, he wrote to 
Browning that, of the two plays which 
were by arrangement to precede his, The 
Patrician's Daughter had been unsuc- 
cessful, and Plighted Troth had " smashed 
his arrangements altogether," but that 



EOBEET BKOWNING 51 

he was still prepared to produce Brown- 
ing's Blot in the 'Scutcheon in accordance 
with his agreement. Undoubtedly, Mac- 
ready hoped that Browning would ap- 
preciate a hint, and withdraw ; but 
the poet, in his own words, "had no 
notion that it was a proper thing, in 
such a case, to release him from his 
promise," and the actor found himself 
obliged in courtesy to go forward. He 
then appears to have lost his temper and 
judgment altogether. He caused the 
piece to be read to the company by the 
prompter, Mr. Willmott, an elderly gen- 
tleman of somewhat comic appearance, 
who so mangled the lines that some of 
the actors laughed. Macready then sent 
for Browning, and told him that his piece 
had been ridiculed by the company en- 
gaged to play it, and yet, when Brown- 
ing expostulated, confessed the circum- 
stances of the reading, and promised to 
read it to the actors next day himself. 
However, having so far made amends, 



52 EOBEET BEOWNING 

he attempted yet another device to get 
Browning to withdraw the play. He 
declared that, under the pressure of 
management, he was unable to play 
Tresham himself, and that Phelps must 
act instead. Again Browning failed to 
take the hint. Phelps was ill, and 
could only sit in a chair at rehearsal, 
while Macready read the part. Appar- 
ently, the manager liked the play better 
after this trial ; for Phelps, stopping 
Browning at the stage door, assured him 
in a broken voice that Macready meant 
to play the part after all, that of course 
he himself could not ask Browning to 
give up such an advantage, but that he 
was prepared to study the part all night, 
if the poet cared to have him play it. 
Thereupon Browning returned to Mac- 
ready's room, and cried abruptly, "I 
beg your pardon, sir ; but you have given 
the part to Mr. Phelps, and I am satis- 
fied that he shall act it." This was two 
days before the performance (February 



ROBERT BROWNING 53 

11, 1843) ; and Phelps had but one clear 
day to rehearse. The result of all this 
unfortunate vacillation was that Mac- 
ready let the representation drift in its 
own way. No new scenery was painted, 
no new dresses bought : the piece was lit- 
erally thrown upon the stage. Yet once 
again, in spite of every hindering ele- 
ment, Browning's dramatic reputation 
was avenged by the issue. Phelps, ill 
as he was, proved better than his word, 
and played the part of Tresham very 
finely. And of Helen Faucit's Mil- 
dred Browning himself wrote with the 
utmost enthusiasm, sending her at the 
same time a copy of verses for her al- 
bum, of which the following lines are a 
striking memento of an unfortunate 
occasion : — 

Helen Faucit, you have twice 
Proved my Bird of Paradise. 
He who would my wits inveigle 
Into boasting him my eagle, 
Turns out very like a Raven: 
Fly off, Blacky, to your haven. 



54 ROBERT BROWNING 

But you, softest Dove, must never 
Leave me, as he does for ever. 
I will strain my eyes to blindness 
Ere lose sight of you and kindness. 



There is no doubt, too, that her tact 
and woman's wit had much to do with 
smoothing matters over in the almost 
disorganised company. She was a true 
friend to Browning in this trying crisis, 
and he in his turn was extremely con- 
siderate and amiable with the actors. 
In the result the piece, difficult and es- 
tranging as some of its taste undoubtedly 
is, went well with the audience, and 
was enthuiastically received. It was 
only played three times, but its prema- 
ture removal was not improbably due to 
Macready's disaffection. It was nearly 
twenty years before he and Browning 
spoke together again. 

The story of this incident, pitiable as 
it is in many of its aspects, has been told 
at some length (with the aid of Mrs. 
Orr and Mr. William Archer), because 



ROBERT BROWNING 55 

there is no doubt that it had a consider- 
able influence upon Browning himself. 
First and last, it separated him alto- 
gether from the theatre. Colombo s 
Birthday, it is true, was performed ten 
years later at the Hay market ; and dur- 
ing the last years of his life Browning 
saw both Strafford and the ill-fated Blot in 
the y Scutcheon not unworthily performed 
by amateurs. But after his misunder- 
standing with Macready he ceased to 
write directly for the stage. It is an 
ambition that every poet feels at some 
period of his career. Nowadays, when 
the pecuniary rewards of a dramatic 
success are so considerable, the glitter of 
the footlights is more than ever tempt- 
ing. With Browning the claim asserted 
itself early, and passed early away. How 
far he would ever have succeeded as a 
popular stage poet is problematic. In that 
glaring light, fustian shows better than 
gossamer 5 and the stage has commonly 
preferred its Sheridan Knowleses to its 



56 ROBERT BEOWNIXG 

Brownings. At any rate, Browning for 
his part had no further traffic with "the 
boards." His experience there served 
him in excellent stead, not only in the 
field of ethics, but of art ; yet he never 
desired ardently to return to it. The 
stage had cost him one of his dearest 
friends, and he was happy to have done 
with it. 



The stage production of A Blot in the 
y Scutcheo7i, whatever its indirect influ- 
ence, was merely an episode. The real 
heart of Browning's activity during the 
first six years of the forties is centred, of 
course, in Bells and Pomegranates. And, 
since these little yellow pamphlets con- 
tained much that will always rank with 
the best of his poetry, it is not without 
interest to notice how ripe was the time 
for a poetic debut. Iu the history of 
Victorian poetry these were indeed years 
of the very first significance. Great 
poetical outbursts invariably move in 
cycles. There are wildernesses of what 
appears to be literary stagnation or pa- 
ralysis, and then suddenly the desert 
blossoms like a rose. This was precisely 
the case at the time which we are con- 
sidering. During the first twenty or 
thirty years of Browning's life, poetry 



58 EOBEET BKOWtfING 

had been languishing. After the some- 
what dreary Ecclesiastical Sonnets of 1822, 
Yarrow Revisited (in 1835) was Words- 
worth's only important publication. 
Crabbe died in 1832 j and, though 
Coleridge lived till two years later, he 
had already been inactive for a decade. 
Moore had found his lyric spring ex- 
hausted, and Southey was devoting the 
last years of his life almost exclusively 
to prose. Suddenly, in 1842, Tennyson, 
who had published nothing for ten years, 
took the public gaze again. His two 
volumes of poems came at the very 
moment when they were needed, and 
their success was immediate. Within a 
few months of their publication a uni- 
versity debating society was discussing 
the question that " Alfred Tennyson is 
the greatest poet of the age," and the 
whole of England was reading ' l Ulysses ? ' 
and the ' ' Dream of Fair Women. ' ' An 
appearance of this kind is never isolated. 
When poetry is in the air, poets are 



ROBERT BROWNING 59 

ready for the hour. The recognition of 
Tennyson was followed at once by a 
burst of rivalry, some deliberate, some 
unconscious. In the former class must 
be placed the feverish activity of Eliza- 
beth Barrett, who at once set about ar- 
ranging a two-volume edition of Poems, 
recasting old pieces and designing new 
ones with all the spasmodic energy of 
the invalid. To the latter, no doubt, we 
must ascribe the calm, even production 
of Robert Browning, who had already 
sketched out his own u programme,' 7 
but who was unquestionably sustained 
in its performance by the general inter- 
est in poetry that was seething in Ten- 
nyson's wake. Various occasions, of 
course, helped to various ends. The 
"Pied Piper," immortal favourite with 
children of every age, was written to 
amuse Macready's little boy, who was 
ill in bed, and wanted a poem to draw 
pictures to. "The Flight of the Duch- 
ess," with six others, was given to Tom 



60 ROBEET BROWNING 

Hood for his Magazine, — a graceful 
assistance to a friend who was himself 
past work. But, whatever the occasion, 
the course of Browning's labours was 
impelled by it, not diverted. It was 
always a characteristic of his work that 
he never allowed considerations from out- 
side to interfere with its order. Editors 
sought him in vain. He would not put 
aside, for the chances of the most brill- 
iant advertisement, work which he had 
planned beforehand. He was one of 
the most conscientious artists that ever 
laboured with the quill. 

During this period of almost ceaseless 
literary activity, Browning seems to 
have worked with all the painstaking 
that was at the disposal of a naturally 
careful artist. Under inspiration he 
wrote rapidly, but the labour of elabora- 
tion and finish was long and thoughtful. 
The mere exercise of writing was not, 
as it is with many men of letters, a pleas- 
ure to him : he never opened his desk, 



ROBERT BROWNING 61 

he said, without a sigh, nor closed it 
without a smile. But his desire for per- 
formance overcame all petty inconven- 
iences. Above all things, he wrote for 
himself, and for the satisfaction of his 
own sense of art. It is clear from his 
letters that he was quite contented with 
the amount of reputation which his 
work had so far brought him. For a 
wide circulation, in a vulgar sense, he 
had very little care. With all his inter- 
est in the mental attitude of the ordi- 
nary man, — and that interest is contin- 
ually apparent, — he had, nevertheless, 
a thoroughly good-natured contempt for 
the judgment of "that rather narrow- 
toned organ, the modern Englishman." 
If the public had bought his poems, he 
would have had use for the money. 
Meanwhile he was far more interested 
in the verdict of those whose opinion 
was worth attention. Criticism which 
appreciated his intention stimulated 
him ; but, if it was unintelligent or un- 



62 ROBERT BROWNING 

sympathetic, lie was not greatly de- 
pressed. He could never understand, 
he said, why Keats or Tennyson should 
"go softly all their days" for the sake 
of an unkind reviewer. Still less could 
he approve of a poet modelling himself, 
against his better instincts, to suit the 
wit of blundering criticism. His friends 
at this time were principally men of 
letters, and such women — a very few — 
as showed literary tendencies. In a 
word, his life was bound up in litera- 
ture. 

It chanced, however, that some three 
years or so before the time we are im- 
mediately considering he had made a 
friend who was to bring a new and ab- 
sorbing interest into his life. 

He was dining, Mrs. Orr tells us, at 
Talfourd's, when an elderly gentleman 
came up to him, and asked if his father 
had ever been at school at Cheshunt. 
Browning remembered that that was the 
case $ and his new acquaintance rejoined, 



ROBERT BROWNING 63 

" Then ask him if he remembers John 
Kenyon." The question was put next 
morning, and the elder Browning re- 
called his old acquaintance at once. The 
two met ? and a broken friendship was re- 
newed with interest. John Kenyon was 
one of the kindest of men. He was gen- 
ial, unselfish, and of a fine, manly as- 
pect. Browning nicknamed him "The 
Magnificent." He was particularly fond 
of young people, and had a true sympa- 
thy with literary aspiration. Among 
the dearest of his friends was his distant 
cousin, Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. To 
her from her earliest years he was, as she 
herself said, 

unspeakably my friend and helper, and my 
books' friend and helper, critic and sympa- 
thiser, true friend of all hours. 

She was, as every one knows, an invalid, 
and so peculiarly dependent upon her 
friends. Kenyon was one of her most 
frequent visitors, and it was his pleasure 
to bring with him any new friend whom 



64 EOBERT BROWNING 

he thought she would like to see in her 
enforced solitude. Shortly after he had 
made the acquaintance of Robert Brown- 
ing, he suggested taking him to Glouces- 
ter Place, where the Barretts were then 
living. They even went to the door ; 
but she was still too ill to see them, and 
by some chance negligence the oppor- 
tunity was not at once repeated. Mean- 
while Elizabeth Barrett passed through 
a great trouble, which marks also, as it 
happens, a crisis in her whole career. 
Her favourite brother was lost at sea 
under circumstances of peculiar poig- 
nancy. 

He was far the dearest to her of all 
her family, and she had been extremely 
ill. It was found necessary to send her 
to Torquay for the winter ; and this 
brother, Edward, took her there, with 
the intention of returning to town at 
once. But, when it became necessary to 
part from him, she was so much over- 
come with grief that they were obliged 



EOBEET BEOWNING 65 

to get him to remain. He stayed with 
her for months, during which she was in 
perpetual danger of death. Then, just 
as she seemed to be recovering, the little 
boat in which he was sailing was mys- 
teriously lost; and she never saw him 
again. With the peculiar sensitiveness 
which was characteristic of her, she 
blamed herself for the catastrophe. Her 
father had much wished the brother to 
return to London ; and she felt now that, 
if he had gone, the misfortune of their 
lives might have been avoided. She 
was at once plunged into the deepest 
distress, in which the kindly affection 
of her father — and this must always be 
remembered in palliation of any later 
doubts — was her only comfort. How- 
ever, she overcame her trouble in time ; 
and with her mastery of it she seemed 
to have gained strength of every kind 
but physical. Her poetry emerged from 
its first imitative immaturity, and she 
began to be recognised as one of the fore- 



66 EOBERT BROWNING 

most writers of her day. She was read, 
first by the few who care for literature, 
then by the wider public both in Eng- 
land and America. She was established 
as a favourite ; enjoyed the confidence 
of critics ; her opinions and advice were 
sought by some of the best-known men 
of her time. As a woman, her position 
was unique. By virtue of her sympathy 
and intellectual vivacity, she queened it 
from her sick-room over the literary 
fashions of London and New York. 

Such was the position of Elizabeth 
Barrett, when Browning, at the close of 
1844, returned from a short tour in Italy 
to find her new Poems the poetic success 
of the season. He naturally hastened to 
read the book, and among the pieces 
found one which had, as a matter of 
fact, been written at full speed to fill 
an empty sheet, but in which he could 
hardly have failed to be pleased by the 
occurrence of his own name : — 



ROBERT BROWNING 67 

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud 
the poems 
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more 
various of our own ; 
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle 
overflowings 
Found in Petrach's sonnets— here's the book, 
the leaf is folded down ! 

Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's 
solemn-thoughted idyll, 
Howitt's ballad - verse, or Tennyson's en- 
chanted reverie,— 
Or from Browning some " Pomegranate," which, 
if cut deep down the middle, 
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a 
veined humanity. 

Browning was indeed delighted with 
the whole work. Meeting his friend 
Kenyon while still full of the subject, he 
expressed his admiration generously. 
"Why don't you write and tell her 
so? " said Kenyon. "She is an invalid, 
and sympathy is a great help to her." 
Browning went home, and took Kenyon 7 s 
advice ; and so began one of the most 
idyllic stories in all the history of love. 



VI. 

The letter which Browning wrote, at 
Kenyon's suggestion, to Elizabeth Bar- 
rett (January 10, 1845), was of precisely 
the kind to strike fire from a nature full 
of the yearning for sympathy. With no 
preamble of introduction or excuse, it 
broke at once into the topic of admira- 
tion. ' i I love your verses with all my 
heart, dear Miss Barrett," — these were 
the first words to greet her eye. The 
letter went on to say that he had meant 
to give himself the pleasure of analysing 
and justifying his enjoyment in her 
poetry, — even, perhaps, of criticising a 
little, — but that, when he sat down to 
write to her, he found it impossible to do 
more than express again and again his 
sincere affection for her work. Finally, 
he told her how Kenyon had once tried 
to bring them together; but a the half- 
opened door shut, and the sight was 



ROBERT BROWNING 69 

never to be." The letter was not long, 
but it was so full of evident sincerity 
that it must have seemed more eloquent 
than columns of conventional praise. 
Elizabeth Barrett was cordially de- 
lighted with it, replied at twice the 
length, begging for the criticism which 
he had withheld, and hinting that the 
meeting, which had been prevented, was, 
perhaps, only deferred. Her letter in 
turn invited an answer, and the corre- 
spondence between them was started 
upon lines that seemed to wander into 
perpetuity. Within three weeks of 
Browning's first letter they had agreed 
to "sign and seal a contract" of friend- 
ship, to write to one another without 
constraint or ceremony, and to discuss 
every topic that might find itself upon 
the paper with an entire absence of con- 
ventionality or pretence. 

If it be true that the surest partner- 
ships are those between friends whose 
qualities supply one another's deficien' 



70 ROBERT BROWNING 

cies, then the alliance between these 
two poets might be said to have prom- 
ised richly from the first. Their lives 
had hitherto afforded a perfect con- 
trast. Always delicate from the time 
when, at the age of fourteen, she was 
thrown from her pony, Elizabeth Barrett 
had spent her early girlhood at the foot 
of the Malvern Hills, with fewer friends 
than books. There she had built up 
for herself an artificial religion of classic 
gods and goddesses, and as a child had 
even offered little secret sacrifices to 
Minerva in hidden corners of the gar- 
den. She lost her mother early, and 
was thrown more and more upon her 
own resources. Among her earliest 
studies had been Tom Paine, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft. 
Out of these she had constructed a sort 
of half-pagan, half-Christian philosophy. 
When the family removed to Lon- 
don, she had indeed enlarged her field 
of vision, and had not altogether lacked 



BOBEBT BKOWNING 71 

the company of men and women. But 
the society of a sick-room is necessarily 
cribbed and confined ; and in the hours 
of her serious illness, when she thought 
that she was never likely to recover, it 
was borne in upon her with every access 
of regret that she had been spending her 
life on literary culture, when she ought 
to have spent it in the study of man- 
kind, and that she really knew very 
little of her fellow men and women. 
With Browning it was precisely the 
reverse. As Kenyon often remarked, 
what seemed the super-subtlety of his 
poetry was in direct contrast with the 
open, practical nature of his social in- 
tercourse. Outside his study he was 
essentially a man of the world. Indeed, 
he was particularly fond of society ; and, 
while his days were laboriously devoted 
to poetry, his evenings were freely given 
to dinners, receptions, dances, and all 
the ordinary routine of a London season. 
His view of life was also eminently 



72 ROBERT BROWNING 

practical, his attitude to the jn'oblems it 
presented reasoned and logical. He 
was as far as possible from the u head- 
long " spirit in which his new friend 
plunged into fresh relations and literary 
enterprises. Each of them may well 
have found in the other the qualities 
most stimulating to mutual respect and 
affection; and it is not surprising that 
their correspondence ripene<J from day to 
day, and became more and more neces- 
sary to their existence. 

Their confidences began at once to 
range over every field of their interests. 
Of their own work, their methods, their 
aspirations, their attitude to criticism, 
and so forth, tliey naturally wrote much. 
Bnt these considerations introduced 
many lesser ones, till they were soon 
diving into every by-path of life and 
literature. Now it was a question of 
calligraphy, — was a large handwriting 
better than a small one, — now some 
difficult passage from iEschylus, — how 



ROBERT BROWNING 73 

it should best be rendered. Then, 
again, they would discuss the advantages 
of social intercourse, the value of fic- 
tion and romance, the privileges of 
travel, the companionship of animals ; 
and every here and there would be 
jotted down some little anecdote or 
amusing touch of character, so that, 
in reading the letters to-day, one is act- 
ually transported into the very atmos- 
phere of early Victorian life and liter- 
ature. And through all these early 
letters there runs one perpetual topic, — 
the return of spring, which is to bring 
her renewed health and enable the two 
to meet. 

It was not till the 20th of May that 
they first met face to face. Then, after 
many postponements and hesitations, the 
"shut door" was at last opened; and 
for an hour and a half of the sunny 
afternoon they talked as they had 
written, of a thousand various interests. 
From the moment that they had met it 



74 ROBERT BROWNING 

is natural that their correspondence 
should become more iutimate. There 
was, indeed, a momentary misunder- 
standing. She, with possibly a touch of 
the u headlong " impetuosity which was 
so characteristic, was apparently respon- 
sible ; but he, interpreting her mean- 
ing with rare delicacy and allowance, 
smoothed things over, and, with the 
exception that one letter was burnt, the 
correspondence continued unaffected. 
He had now seen her and her surround- 
ings ; and henceforth the names of her 
family appear frequently in the letters, 
and he is able to take a larger share in 
the smaller incidents of her life. More- 
over, they continued to meet, sometimes 
once, sometimes twice a week ; and the 
friendship rapidly developed into a 
deeper sentiment. 

It is, of course, impossible, within the 
space at our disposal, to dig very deeply 
into the rich mine of their confidences ; 
nor is it, perhaps, desirable. As their 



ROBERT BROWNING 75 

affection became more intimate, much 
was said on either side that is best read 
in their own words alone : the sensitive 
reader may even experience a feeling of 
intrusion in being permitted to know so 
much of the secrets of their love. But, 
in order to understand the course of 
events, certain incidents, now common 
to history, must be noticed. 

As the autumn grew near, it was 
thought that Elizabeth Barrett ought to 
be sent to winter abroad. Pisa was sug- 
gested, also Alexandria, also Malta. 
Her brothers seem to have been anxious 
that she should go. Her favourite sister, 
Arabel, was willing to accompany her. 
But her father was firm in his opposi- 
tion. Removed as we are now from the 
circumstances of the time, and obscured 
as many of the issues have become, it is 
difficult to judge fairly of the ground 
of his determination. Moreover, there 
are still those living to whom any dis- 
cussion of the matter must be pain- 



76 EOBERT BROWNING 

fill ; and it is desirable to speak with 
every consideration and restraint. But 
the question has been much discussed ; 
and it would certainly seem that Mr. 
Barrett, the elder, has been generally 
misjudged. He was "a father of the 
old school," as the phrase runs ; and he 
claimed, as fathers commonly did claim 
half a century ago, a strong hand over 
his children. He seems to have believed 
that his daughter's ailments were largely 
neurotic, and that, if she exercised her 
will-power more strenuously, she might 
be very much stronger. He used to 
grumble at her dinner of dry toast, and 
exclaim that, if she had lived all her life 
upon porter and steaks, she would have 
been as well as other girls. No doubt he 
thought the scheme of travelling abroad 
unnecessary, and held it his duty as a 
father to withstand it. For he was 
clearly very fond of his daughter : he 
used to visit her sick-room every night, 
and offer her the best consolation that 



EOBEET BEOWOTKG 77 

was in his power. The days of paternal 
government are over now, and we have 
begun to understand that a father may 
be something better than an autocrat. 
Bat fifty years ago the autocracy of the 
arm-chair was the rule of the household, 
and it is doubtful whether Mr. Barrett 
was very different from other fathers of 
his time. At any rate, the autumn 
passed ; and it was decided that the in- 
valid was to stay in Wimpole Street. At 
first, it was a bitter disappointment ; but 
she soon saw, as Browning told her, that 
it was her duty to him and to herself to 
face the situation and the winter winds 
bravely, and to preserve her health for 
the spring and its possibilities. For 
they were now definitely engaged, al- 
though the engagement was kept a 
secret. To Browning this secrecy was 
galling. His natural frankness and 
sense of honour rebelled against it. 
But she assured him that it was neces- 
sary, not only to her present peace, but 



74 ROBERT BROWNING 

is natural that their correspondence 
should become more intimate. There 
was, indeed, a momentary misunder- 
standing. She, with possibly a touch of 
the u headlong " impetuosity which was 
so characteristic, was apparently respon- 
sible j but he, interpreting her mean- 
ing with rare delicacy and allowance, 
smoothed things over, and, with the 
exception that one letter was burnt, the 
correspondence continued unaffected. 
He had now seen her and her surround- 
ings ; and henceforth the names of her 
family appear frequently in the letters, 
and he is able to take a larger share in 
the smaller incidents of her life. More- 
over, they continued to meet, sometimes 
once, sometimes twice a week ; and the 
friendship rapidly developed into a 
deeper sentiment. 

It is, of course, impossible, within the 
space at our disposal, to dig very deeply 
into the rich mine of their confidences ; 
nor is it, perhaps, desirable. As their 



ROBERT BKOWKTNG 75 

affection became more intimate, much 
was said on either side that is best read 
in their own words alone : the sensitive 
reader may even experience a feeling of 
intrusion in being permitted to know so 
much of the secrets of their love. But, 
in order to understand the course of 
events, certain incidents, now common 
to history, must be noticed. 

As the autumn grew near, it was 
thought that Elizabeth Barrett ought to 
be sent to winter abroad. Pisa was sug- 
gested, also Alexandria, also Malta. 
Her brothers seem to have been anxious 
that she should go. Her favourite sister, 
Arabel, was willing to accompany her. 
But her father was firm in his opposi- 
tion. Removed as we are now from the 
circumstances of the time, and obscured 
as many of the issues have become, it is 
difficult to judge fairly of the ground 
of his determination. Moreover, there 
are still those living to whom any dis- 
cussion of the matter must be pain- 



80 EOBEET BROWNING 

she felt he must do as he pleased j but, 
for her own money, it was hers, and she 
would never consent to "put away from 
her God's gifts, given perhaps in order 
to this very end." And, even if the 
diplomatic post were secured, it might 
separate them. She could not, for ex- 
ample, accompany him to the cold of 
Russia. So the scheme, so honourable 
to Browning in its conception, fell 
through ; and the summer passed in 
plans and counter- plans. 

With the autumn matters came to a 
head. It became again clear that the 
winter ought to be spent abroad, but 
again there was the same opposition. 
Suggestions were made for a com- 
promise, — Dover, Reigate, Tunbridge. 
But Elizabeth Barrett was now deter- 
mined that another winter in England 
was more than she could endure, and 
that, if she was not to go abroad as 
Edward Barrett's daughter, she would 
do so as Robert Browning's wife. When 



EOBEET BROWNING 81 

at last her brother was sent to Reigate to 
look out for a house, she felt that the 
former contingency was hopeless. On 
the morning of Saturday, September 12, 
1846, she walked with her maid from her 
father's house in Wimpole Street to the 
nearest cab-stand, and was driven to the 
Church of St. Marylebone, where she 
and Browning were married at eleven 
o'clock. When she stepped from the 
house, she was so weak that they had to 
go to a chemist for sal-volatile ; but 
her courage and confidence carried her 
through what must have been, for one so 
delicate, a really terrible ordeal. Yet, in 
her own beautiful words, — 

I thought that of the many, many women who 
have stood where I stood, and to the same end, 
not one of them all perhaps, not one perhaps, 
since that building was a church, has had reasons 
strong as mine for an absolute trust and devo- 
tion towards the man she married,— not one ! 

At the church door they parted, and 
Robert Browning noted on the envelope 



82 ROBERT BROWNING 

of the last letter which she wrote him 
before their marriage that this was their 
ninety-first meeting. When next they 
met, they were never again to be parted 
in life. 

She drove to Hugh Stuart Boyd's, and 
thence after lunch to Hampstead, pass- 
ing on the way the church of so many 
new memories. It was, in every respect, 
one of the strangest wedding days. But 
Browning felt that the strain of the 
occasion was as much as his wife could 
bear at the moment, and that to start 
upon a journey immediately would be 
in the last degree unwise. A week 
elapsed before he saw her again, The in- 
terval was passed in a rapid interchange 
of anxious letters, fixing upon trains and 
packets, and then unsettling plans again. 
Mrs. Orr tells us that these few days 
were among the most harassed and de- 
pressed in the whole of Browning's life. 
But at last everything was settled ; 
and during the afternoon of Saturday, 



EOBEET BEOWNING 83 

September 19, while the family were 
at the dinner table, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning and her maid, the luggage 
having been safely sent before, stole 
secretly from the house in Wimpole 
Street, and drove to Mne Elms Station. 
Nor must one forget that there was a 
third companion in the cab. The faith- 
ful Flush, her dog, who had been but 
a fortnight before recovered from thieves, 
was not one to be neglected in even the 
most perilous of retreats. There was 
danger indeed that he might arouse the 
house by barking at the prospect of the 
open air ; but, with a dog's intelligence, 
he grasped the situation, and trotted 
along without a sound. In the gallery 
of true friends Flush will never be for- 
gotten. 

Therefore to this dog will I 
Tenderly, not scornfully, 
Render praise and favour : 
With my hand upon his head 
Is my benediction said 
Therefore, and forever. 



84 EOBEET BKOWNING 

The j ourney was safely undertaken. The 
Brownings left Southampton by boat that 
evening, and were at Paris next morning. 
The new life was begun, and from that 
day no further letters passed between 
the untiring correspondents. For they 
were never again apart. 



VII. 

So romantic an elopement conld not 
fail to be the topic of much discussion. 
Secrecy had been wonderfully preserved. 
Even the most intimate friends were sur- 
prised. John Kenyon, whatever he may 
have suspected, knew nothing definitely 
till the event was past ; and Forster, 
who since the evening we first saw him 
at Elstree had become a close confidant, 
derived his information from a slip of 
proof in the Examiner office. When he 
read in the type of his own paper that 
his friend Browning was actually mar- 
ried, he sent in hot haste for the com- 
positor, and demanded the manuscript. 
It was in the handwriting of Browning's 
sister ; and, on reading it, Forster was 
for the first time persuaded that the 
whole affair was, after all, not a hoax. 
Meanwhile the household at Wimpole 
Street was thrown into a fine confusion. 



86 EOBERT BKOWNING 

Mr. Barrett's indignation was illimit- 
able. He had been defied and out- 
witted. Henceforth, in the words of that 
other disappointed father, he had "no 
such daughter." He never consented 
either to write to Mrs. Browning or to 
see her again. 

The event, of course, made no little 
stir in what are called ' ' literary circles. ' ' 
Every one was talking that autumn of 
"the marriage of Miss Barrett." She, 
it is worth remarking, was the undis- 
puted protagonist j for at this time there 
was no comparison between the literary 
reputations of the two Brownings. The 
two-volume edition of her Poems had 
made her the cynosure of the critics 7 
eyes, while her husband had been slowly 
receding from their gaze ever since the 
appearance of Sordello. Strange as it 
seems now, it is nevertheless clear that 
even his best friends were at this time a 
little doubtful of his promise. Neither 
Pauline nor Paracelsus had enjoyed a 



ROBERT BKOWNING 87 

large audience, but they had been read 
in the right quarters. Following on 
them, Sordello disappointed expectation ; 
and not even the Bells and Pomegranates, 
the last of which was printed in the year 
of his marriage, had restored the confi- 
dence of Browning's friends. In the 
year when he and Elizabeth Barrett 
joined hands, she was perhaps at the 
height of her reputation, while his stood 
at its lowest ebb. 

In the meantime, while London was 
talking, the Brownings had reached 
Paris. The journey was not without its 
anxieties : the violent traffic of boat and 
railway wrought havoc with his wife's 
nerves. They found it necessary to 
move slowly south from Paris to Genoa, 
from Genoa to Pisa. At every turn of 
the way the bride was cared for by her 
husband with the most unfailing consid- 
eration. "Temper, spirits, manners," 

— she wrote to her friend, Miss Mitford, 

— ' i there is not a flaw anywhere. I 



S8 KGBEKT BKOWKING 

shut my eyes sometimes, and fancy it all 
a dream of my guardian angel." But, 
fortunately, as they approached warmer 
climes, her health improved steadily ; 
and, by the time they had reached Pisa, 
she was feeling stronger than she had 
done for years. "Not improved, but 
transformed/' she reported herself, and 
full of the beauty of the mild, restful 
country and the purple mountains, 
" gloriously beckoning the traveller into 
the vine land." Here, at Pisa, they set- 
tled for the winter, near the Duomo, 
with the Leaning Tower in close prospect 
from their windows. They had many 
books with them, and would discuss of 
an evening the methods of Balzac and 
Dumas, of Stendhal and George Sand. 
During the day they worked, each in a 
separate room ; and it was at this time 
that Mrs. Browning's finest series of 
poems was brought to a finish. 

Literary history owes to Mr. Edmund 
Gosse the picturesque story of the gen- 



ROBERT BROWXIXG 89 

esis of Sonnets from the Portuguese. It 
was Robert Browning's custom, he tells 
us, to work in a downstairs room, 
where their meals were spread ; while 
his wife studied in a room on the floor 
above. One morning, within a few 
months of their settlement at Pisa, Brown- 
ing stood at the window of his room, 
watching the street while the break- 
fast table was being cleared for his work. 
Suddenly his wife stole behind him, 
and, seizing his shoulder to prevent him 
from turning, slipped a packet of papers 
into his coat. He was to read it, she 
said, and tear it up if he did not like it. 
When he turned again, she was gone, 
too shy to await his verdict. The par- 
cel, when opened, was found to contain 
the noble series of sonnets which is now 
generally acknowledged to be the flower 
of Mrs. Browning's poetry. As he read 
them one by one, the husband was 
conscious that here were "the finest 
sonnets written in any language since 



90 EOBERT BKOWHTNX3- 

Shakespeare. " He liastened to his 
wife's work-room, to assure her face to 
face of his unbounded admiration. He 
urged her to print them, but she de- 
murred. They were too intimate, she 
felt, for print ; for they contained the 
sacred secrets of her betrothal. At last 
she consented to a private publication ; 
and the package was sent home to Miss 
Mitford, with the request that she would 
see it through the press. The sonnets 
were printed that same year in a small 
octavo of 47 pages. Then, however, the 
little pamphlet was entitled simply 
Sonnets by E. B. B. It was not till 
they were included in her collected 
poems three years later that the question 
of a more distinctive title arose. She 
was for calling them Sonnets from the 
Bosnian, with an implication that they 
were translated ; but Browning, whose 
pet name for his wife was " my little Por- 
tuguese," cried: " Bosnian, no! that 
means nothing. From the Portuguese : 



KOBEET BROWNING 91 

they are Catarina's sonnets!" The 
name was kept, and is now among the 
classics of literature. 

Such is Mr. Gosse's story, told with 
all his grace and sympathy 5 and a 
pretty picture it makes of the Brown- 
ings' mutual understanding and fellow- 
ship. There is much more to linger 
over, were there space to be minute. 
That interesting year — 1847, the year 
of The Princess and Jane Eyre, Tailored 
and Wuthering Heights — was passed by 
the secluded poets in Italy in pleasant, 
easy travelling. In the spring they left 
Pisa for Florence, where during the 
summer they changed lodgings from 
time to time, as the heat and more than 
one failure of health drew them to seek 
variety. They penetrated to leafy Val- 
lombrosa, making friends with the abbot 
there, and spent long moonlit evenings 
on their balcony terrace, with the 
lightest meals of iced water and melon. 
In the spring that followed a somewhat 



92 ROBEBT BROWNING 

ailing winter they moved at last into 
what proved something like an abiding 
home, the Guidi Palace, long since fa- 
miliar to the untravelled from the re- 
markable poem which bears its name. 
There were six spacious rooms in their 
tenement, facing the grey walls of the 
church of San Felice. The long draw- 
ing-room, which looked out upon it, was 
Mrs. Browning's favourite room. It 
opened upon a balcony full of flowers. 
Its walls were hung with tapestry j and 
they collected in it quaint bookcases of 
Florentine workmanship, and grave, 
sweet pictures of saints and martyrs. 
The furnishing of the rooms was an 
absorbing interest, and everything was 
chosen with the view of harmony. It 
was here that Casa Guidi Windows was 
finished, and Aurora Leigh begun. 

At Casa Guidi, too, on March 9, 1849, 
a son was born to them. The strain of 
anxiety which Browning naturally un- 
derwent, while a delicate wife was pass- 



EOBEET BEOWNING 93 

ing through a dangerous crisis, was ren- 
dered more poignant by the death of his 
mother, which followed immediately 
upon the birth of his son. Browning 
had always loved his mother with a pas- 
sionate devotion, and for months he was 
unable to rally from the intolerable 
depression into which her loss plunged 
him. He was unable to eat or sleep, 
and his wife was clear in her conviction 
that a change was absolutely needful. 
They travelled to Spezzia and the Baths 
of Lucca, Mrs. Browning gaining 
strength with every new delight of 
scenery and association. The mountain 
air and the Italian sunshine were the 
breath of her life ; and, as he watched 
her expanding in intellectual and phys- 
ical beauty under his gaze, her husband 
cast off his melancholy, and for the first 
time for two or three years began to re- 
sume his literary work. His poems 
were reissued in two volumes in the year 
of his son's birth, and during the follow- 



94 KOBEET BEOWNING 

iog year lie wrote Christmas Eve and 

Easter Bay. 

In the summer of the year following 
that of Tennyson's marriage and laure- 
ateship, the Brownings revisited Eng- 
land. They had left many friends there, 
whose company they had often sighed 
for in Florence ; and it is not unlikely 
that Mrs. Browning had some hope that, 
if her father heard of her presence in 
England, he might consent to see her 
and be reconciled. In this, however, 
she was disappointed. During the ten 
years that intervened between her mar- 
riage and his own death, her father re- 
mained obdurate. The season in Lon- 
don, however, brought them many 
pleasures and the resumption of many 
old friendships. Their rooms in Devon- 
shire Street were full of friends j and 
among the first whom Browning intro- 
duced to his wife was his old patron, 
Fox. It was autumn before they could 
tear themselves away. Then they re- 



EOBEET BROWNING 95 

turned as far as Paris, where they spent 
the winter. It would be tedious to fol- 
low at great length the tale of their daily 
meetings with distinguished people. A 
few incidents, however, stand out con- 
spicuously. It was here, in Paris, this 
autumn that Mrs. Browning first met 
the Tennysons, who had lost their first 
child that Easter, and were travelling 
for distraction upon that southern jour- 
ney recorded in "The Daisy." The 
friendship which already subsisted be- 
tween the husbands was re-echoed by 
the wives. "Mrs. Browning," said her 
new friend, "met me as though she had 
been my own sister." A few months 
later, when Hallam (the present Lord 
Tennyson) was born, the Brownings 
were among the first to receive the 
happy news ; and Mrs. Browning's sym- 
pathetic congratulations were the very 
first to reach the home at Twickenham. 
Here, too, at Paris the Brownings saw 
George Sand, "a noble woman under 



96 EOBEET BBOWNING 

the mud," who had always been a sub- 
ject of peculiar interest to them, and for 
whom — though they were disappointed 
in her lack of frankness — they retained a 
sincere, if rather compassionate admira- 
tion. Victor Hugo was another acquaint- 
ance of this period ; and B6ranger, if 
not met face to face, was a near and ob- 
served neighbour. 

It was during this winter at Paris, so 
full of varied memories, that Browning 
wrote what was his only important piece 
of prose criticism. Moxon, the pub- 
lisher, had acquired what he believed 
to be a bundle of hitherto imprinted 
letters from Shelley, and wrote to 
Browning, who had lately transferred 
his poems to Moxon' s care, asking him 
to write an introduction. Browning, as 
we know, had always been an admirer 
of Shelley ; and his recent visit to 
Spezzia may naturally have whetted his 
enthusiasm. He agreed to undertake 
the work, and the letters were sent him. 



ROBERT BROWNING 97 

As is now proved, they were, with one 
possible exception, entirely spurious, 
but so cleverly imitated that Browning 
does not seem to have penetrated the 
forgery. He saw, however, that they 
had very little intrinsic interest ; and 
his introduction, instead of dealing with 
the letters themselves, took the form of 
a general eulogy of Shelley's genius and, 
in some respects, a vindication of his 
life from calumny and misunderstand- 
ing. The essay, which is extremely 
interesting, both for its own criticism 
and also as a reflection of Browning's 
attitude, has been reprinted by the 
Browning Society. The original publi- 
cation was withdrawn, when the spurious 
character of the letters was discovered. 

With the spring the Brownings re- 
turned to Casa Guidi ; and, though they 
were back again in England in the sum- 
mer, it is at Florence that interest 
chiefly centres for the next two years. 
For, broken as their time was by anxie- 



98 ROBERT BROWNING 

ties over their child's health and by 
occasional incursions into what seemed 
healthier quarters, it was at Casa Guidi 
that they did all the more important 
part of their work. "While there, they 
lived a secluded and laborious life. The 
society of their child was almost their 
only distraction. When the pressure of 
work began to tell upon them, they 
moved elsewhere, — to Paris or London, 
— reserving Florence as the home of 
their poetry. For Browning was now 
engaged upon In a Balcony and the 
illustrious gallery of Men and Women, 
while his wife was writing Aurora 
Leigh. She had had the idea of a 
novel in verse before her for years. In 
one of her earliest letters to her husband 
she told him of it, and he cordially ap- 
proved. But it grew slowly, — for Tier, 
very slowly, — being, indeed, ten years 
in the making. 

Once only was their seclusion broken 
by strenuous interests from without, 



ROBERT BROWNING 99 

when Miss Faucit (by this time Mrs. 
Theodore Martin) proposed to bring 
out Colombe>8 Birthday on the stage. 
Mrs. Browning was feverishly interested 
in the scheme ; but, if further evidence 
were needed of the disinclination for the 
stage which the trouble with Macready 
had brought to Browning, it would be 
afforded by the indifference with which 
he regarded the present production. 
He was grateful for the friendly feeling, 
but he would take no active part in the 
preparation. Beyond referring the ac- 
tress to the latest edition of the play and 
begging her to use that text as it stood, 
he troubled not at all about the matter. 
The piece had a success with the critics ; 
but it was again badly acted, Miss 
Faucit alone, and for the third time, 
doing justice to the poet's intention. 

For the rest, there was the life of the 
mountains, with much riding along pre- 
cipitous paths and tarryings at little 
country inns to feast on strawberries and 



100 EOBEET BEOWNING 
milk. They seem to have found in their 
work, and in the splendid communion of 
nature, everything they needed for re- 
freshment and consolation. It is a fine 
testimony to Browning's confidence and 
artistic magnanimity that, during these 
years of hard work, he never seems to 
have felt depression from any sense of 
lack of public appreciation. It was 
enough for him to be doing work that 
was gradually growing more into accord- 
ance with his own and his wife's ideal. 
He was confident, but never over- confi- 
dent. In all probability it never oc- 
curred to him that the poetry which was 
springing up among those vineyards and 
olive groves of Florence was to be among 
the most precious of all the treasures of 
English literature. Certainly, he never 
would have allowed that the Men and 
Women among whom he was living were 
more vital creatures than his wife's 
Aurora Leigh, Eomney, and Marian 
Erie. "She has genius," he said: "I 



EOBEET BBOWNISTG 101 
am only a painstaking fellow. Can't 
you imagine a clever sort of angel who 
plots and plans and tries to build up 
something ? He wants to make you see 
it as he sees it, shows you one point of 
view, carries you off to another, ham- 
mering into your head the things that he 
wants you to understand ; and, whilst 
all this bother is going on, God Al- 
mighty turns you off a little star. 
That's the difference between us." 

There is no artist but would wish for 
just such modesty for himself. Yet this 
man wrote "Abt Vogler" and the 
" Guardian Angel." 



VIII. 

The summer of 1855, when next the 
Brownings were in London, was one of 
uncommon literary agitation. It is, in- 
deed, not unlikely that the sense of 
movement at the centre of things induced 
them to break in upon their Florentine 
seclusion ; for they were both engrossed 
in work at the time, and the change 
must have incurred interruptions. But 
it was a great year in literary London. 
Seldom have so many masterpieces burst 
upon a single season. Dickens had fin- 
ished Little Dorrit; Kingsley, Westward 
Ho! Macaulay had put forth two new vol- 
umes, the third and fourth, of his monu- 
mental History of England; a new series 
of Poems had borne the name of Matthew 
Arnold ; Thackeray published the last 
part of The Newcomes in August. Leigh 
Hunt, George MacDonald, and Anthony 
Trollope were all represented by less im- 



EOBERT BROWNING 103 
portant volumes ; and people were talk- 
ing vaguely of a new genius, revealed in 
a rich and imaginative romance called 
the Shaving of Shagpat. Above all other 
books, Maud was the poem of the year. 
When the Brownings reached London, 
the critical bombardment of Tennyson 
had begun ; and all the various passions 
of mankind were being exercised in his 
condemnation and defence. Such an 
atmosphere was acutely stimulating to 
literary production, and there is no 
doubt that both poets felt the move- 
ment. They saw their friends freely, 
but callers were apt to notice that Mrs. 
Browning slipped a scrap of paper be- 
neath her pillow as they were ushered 
into the room. She was, indeed, finish- 
ing Aurora Leigh at high-speed, writing, 
as the inspiration seized her, upon backs 
of envelopes, advertisements, or any 
blank sheet that was ready to her hand. 
Browning himself was correcting the 
proofs of Men and Women; and, on the 



104 EOBEET BEOWNING 
evening when Tennyson read Maud to a 
select company in the Brownings' rooms 
in Dorset Street, the ink was scarcely 
dry upon the beautiful dedication, " One 
Word More." By the time the Brown- 
ings were back again in Eome the two 
volumes of Men and Women were in the 
reviewers' hands. 

With this publication we enter upon 
a new period of Browning's life. Now, 
for the first time since his earlier vol- 
umes had surprised a little clan into 
admiration, he began to take a definite 
place in the estimates of criticism. 
There is no doubt that great expecta- 
tions had been founded upon these vol- 
umes, and that the loving hopes of the 
wife prophesied a high success for them. 
It is equally certain that these expecta- 
tions were far from being fulfilled. 
"You should see Chapman's returns," 
she wrote. And the gloomy figures of 
the publishers' balance sheet proved too 
clearly that the poet had not yet touched 



ROBERT BROWNING 105 
the big reading public with whom Ten- 
nyson was now established. But Men 
and Women, containing, one need scarcely 
say, much of his finest and most concen- 
trated work, had more than restored the 
shattered confidence of his friends. It 
had introduced him also to another gen- 
eration of students of poetry, who were 
too young to remember the appearance 
of Pauline, and had found but few men- 
tors to point out its promise. From this 
time, although the common interest in 
Browning was still languid and puzzled, 
the literary interest in him continued 
firm and increasing. In America he 
was at once recognised far more cor- 
dially than in England. There were 
"Browning evenings" in Boston ; and it 
could not but hurt his wife's sensibility 
that "a small knot of pre-Baphaelite 
men" should form the main body of 
Browning's public in his own country, 
while in America an acquaintance with 
his work was held as a necessary badge 



106 EOBEET BKOWNING 

of culture. Nevertheless, lie was no 

longer " neglected " in the most galling 

sense of that much-abused phrase. In 

the small circle where the highest poetry 

is appreciated he had his place of 

honour. 

This winter of partial disappointment 
was spent in Paris, with much visiting 
and entertainment ; and during its gay 
months Mrs. Browning worked unceas- 
ingly upon Aurora Leigh. By the sum- 
mer it was finished, the last touch being 
added, as the dedication shows, upon the 
17th of October, 1856, when from John 
Kenyon's own house in London she as- 
cribed the poem to her cousin and friend 
who through "her various efforts in 
literature and steps in life had believed 
in her, borne with her, and been gener- 
ous to her far beyond the common uses 
of mere relationship and sympathy.' 7 
This touching dedication is the closing 
act in a friendship of unfailing devotion. 
"Within two months of its inscription the 



KOBEKT BROWNING 107 

kind and manly heart of Kenyon had 
ceased to beat. He was not privileged 
to witness the full success of the book, — 
a success which would have been in- 
tensely gratifying to him. But his last 
thoughts were for his friends ; and by 
his will the Brownings, husband and 
wife, were generously and helpfully 
benefited. Their sorrow for his loss was 
overwhelming. For a time it blotted 
out all other interests. At length, how- 
ever, they returned to Florence and to 
work. 

The success of Aurora Leigh was im- 
mediate. It will never rank with the 
best of its author's work. It is very un- 
equal in style. There are arid wastes of 
narrative, and sentiment is sometimes 
drowned in sentimentality. But its very 
faults endeared it to the general reader, 
and probably no single poem has been 
so frequently bestowed as a gift-book. 
At one time it shared with Coventry 
Patmore's The Angel in the House the 



108 EOBEET BEOWNING 

honours of literary pre-eminence in 
every list of wedding presents. As Mrs. 
Browning justly said, she had no cause 
to complain of the public attitude 
towards herself, for hers were the privi- 
leges of a favourite. 

Meanwhile their child was growing 
up, and in his society they found conso- 
lation for the loss of older friends. He 
was a perpetual companion to them, 
sharing their mountain expeditions, and 
adding with pleasant prattle to the di- 
versions of the way. They took up 
again their dreamy life, and the thunder 
of London sounded far away. Occasion- 
ally a friend broke in upon them with 
news from the book world. Occasion- 
ally again they were able of their own 
initiative to cement old friendships and 
associations. Among such incidents was 
their pleasant and kindly intercourse 
with Walter Savage Landor. The old 
man was at Fiesole, very unhappy, and 
time after time escaped to the Brown- 



ROBERT BROWNING 109 
ings with an eloquent tale of loneliness. 
Browning, feeliug that it was an urgent 
situation, wrote to Landor' s brother, and 
arranged for his support, so that the 
aged poet was settled in a cottage close 
to Casa Guidi, and cared for by the very 
maid who had been Mrs. Browning's 
companion in her elopement, and her 
faithful attendant ever since. The ar- 
rangement had its clouds, for Landor 
was not always suave. There were mo- 
ments when suspicion and a hot temper 
made the situation narrow enough. But 
Browning understood the old man's 
innate gentleness, and was wonderfully 
adroit in smoothing over difficulties. 
Landor lived in the little Florentine cot- 
tage very comfortably for the five re- 
maining years of his life. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Browning had been 
seriously ailing, and her husband's anx- 
iety had been intolerable. It would 
seem that the air of Florence was begin- 
ning to undermine the health of both 



110 ROBERT BROWNING 
of them. Neither was well, and her con- 
dition gave cause for the gravest appre- 
hension. They moved her to Rome, 
however ; and she rallied slowly, dating 
from there the fulminating Poems be- 
fore Congress which showed how closely 
she had taken the interests of her adopted 
country to heart, no less than how gen- 
erously illogical a true woman may at 
times become. The anxieties of the 
hour increased ; and it is small wonder 
that Browning found it impossible to 
write. Active manual work became 
essential to distraction, and he busied 
himself with modelling from the antique. 
As soon as he had finished a bust or 
torso, he broke it, and began upon an- 
other. His restlessness was acute. The 
winter, however, passed without disas- 
ter ; and they returned to Siena for the 
spring. Then a fresh anxiety broke in 
upon them. Mrs. Browning's sister Hen- 
rietta (Mrs. Surtees Cook) became dan- 
gerously ill ; and during the next winter, 



ROBERT BROWNING 111 
again spent at Roine, she died. The 
shock prostrated Mrs. Browning, and 
she never really recovered. They took 
her back to Casa Guidi ; and there, in 
the home of her happiest memories, she 
sank gradually, but peacefully. At the 
last it was her love and sorrow for Italy 
which dealt her death-blow. The news 
of Cavour's death plunged her into a 
melancholy from which she was unable 
to rouse herself. "If tears or blood 
could have saved him, he should have 
had mine," she wrote. Three weeks 
later, on the 29th of June, 1861, the 
tender, chivalrous, and eager spirit of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was at rest 
forever. 

Words like "love" and "womanli- 
ness, ' ' so often abused in the currency of 
speech and print, begin in time to lose 
their lustre. "The eternal God- word, 
Love," is forced into so many sullied 
uses that men are obliged to decorate it 



112 ROBERT BROWNING 
with epithets, when they wish to give 
it a more than common implication of 
purity and strength. But for the poet of 
the Sonnets from the Portuguese two words 
only suffice : "love" and " womanli- 
ness " were of the essence of her fine 
and quintessential spirit. Love, in itself 
rebellious of restraint, overwhelming, 
tempestuous, will not always go hand in 
hand with reason : the feminine nature 
is often too self-sufficing to seek for argu- 
ments. But with women, and above all 
with women who love, there is a wonder- 
ful, prompting instinct, which leads 
them more directly towards truth than 
all the weighed and proportioned logic 
of men ; and the causes to which Eliza- 
beth Barrett Browning lent her bright 
enthusiasm were rarely causes undeserv- 
ing of her love. Her poetry suffered 
from her passion. She felt so strongly, 
that she could not always pause to choose 
expressions for her feeling ; and much 
that she wrote in a white heat of elo- 



KOBERT BROWNING 113 

quence is unlikely to bear the cooling, 
sifting influence of time. As a poet, she 
stands a step below the highest. She 
saw, indeed, into the holy of holies, — 
saw, in her own words, 

The cherub faces which emboss 

The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat ; 

but it was not hers to minister at the 
altar. Yet even here, and so far, 
" Blessed are they which have seen.' 7 

But what was denied her in art was 
given back to her an hundred- fold in life. 
The story of her devotion to her love is 
the story, as a critic has well said, of the 
"stainless harmony " of two of the 
finest spirits that were ever trammelled 
with the cares of humanity. The grand 
ideal of marriage, so often blurred be- 
hind a mist of hindering emotions, 
gleams out in their life, like the noonday 
sun in its strength. The marriage of 
true minds admits no impediment. 



rs. 

When the first acute bitterness of his 
loss was over, and he was able to think 
of the future, Browning decided that 
Florence was no longer possible as a 
home. Its memories were too poignant, 
and he had his little son to consider. 
An English education seemed desirable, 
no less than woman's companionship ; 
and it was settled that the Brownings 
should move to London, where Miss 
Arabel Barrett, his wife's favourite sis- 
ter, was engaged in a sort of mission 
work among the destitute children of 
Paddington. Browning had always been 
fond of her. She was a gentle creature, 
in whose presence, as Mrs. Browning 
once said, no one ever mentioned the 
possibility of one man hating another ; 
for she was all love and self-sacrifice. 
His own sister was engaged in taking 
care of her aged father in Paris - y and so 



EOBEET BROWNING 115 
lie naturally turned to the other aunt, 
and to London. As soon as the neces- 
sary preparations were completed, they 
left Florence, the melancholy interval 
having found some consolation in the 
devoted kindness of another friend, Miss 
Isa Blagden, who took little "Pen" 
from the house of mourning, and did all 
she could to spare both him and his 
father the more sordid cares inseparable 
from such an occasion. Two summer 
months were passed near Dinard, and 
in the early autumn Robert Browning 
and his son arrived in town. After a 
few months of unsettled lodging, Brown- 
ing took a house in Warwick Crescent, 
over against the canal, and within a 
stone's throw of Miss Barrett's home in 
Delamere Terrace. This was his Lon- 
don home for more than twenty-five 
years. 

Of the many actions in his life which 
go to prove Browning's strength of mind 
and character, there is nothing so im- 



116 EOBEET BROWNING 

pressive as this stern, lonely resumption 
of work and duty. For many years to 
come his life was to creep on broken 
wing ; and, indeed, so far as the finer 
issues of the spirit go, he always felt that 
his life was already behind him. Still, 
with indomitable energy, he pursued 
the path he had set before himself. The 
education of his son he regarded as a 
sacred legacy from his wife, the comple- 
tion of his own work in poetry as the 
only offering he could make to her 
memory. Like the speaker of his own 
" Evelyn Hope/' he looked out upon 
the future with the determination to 
win all that was essential from the 
present. 

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gained me the gains of various men, 

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes. 

It was part of the religion of his love 
that no talent which could be devoted to 
its service should be buried in a napkin. 



ROBERT BROWNING 117 
At first the depression of a change 
from a Florentine summer to a damp, 
foggy London winter was almost over- 
whelming. "How I yearn, yearn for 
Italy ! " he wrote. But his natural 
courage carried him through ; and he 
soon took up the new life, not only with 
resignation, but with something like 
zest. He had work in hand to finish, 
and he was engaged also in preparing 
for publication a posthumous volume of 
his wife's Last Poems. So the winter 
passed, and the next summer, which, in 
accordance with what now became a 
general custom with him, was spent 
abroad at Biarritz. Henceforth it be- 
comes unnecessary to review his simple, 
recurrent life month by month. The 
winters were spent in London and the 
summers on the Continent ; and winter 
and summer alike he divided his time 
between the company of his friends and 
the consolations of his poetry. 

In 1864 he published Dramatis Per- 



118 ROBERT BROWNING 
sonce, after a silence of nine years. 
Probably Browning, absorbed in his 
own art, bad scarcely noticed any 
change in the general attitude to poetry ; 
but it so happened that during those 
nine years there had been a considerable 
development of poetic taste among the 
younger generation. Especially at the 
universities poetry had begun to be 
read more intelligently, and to be writ- 
ten, less in the old formal fashion of Pope 
qualified by Crabbe, and with a nearer 
approach to spontaneity and freedom 
from academic affectation. The influ- 
ence of Ruskin, which had been slowly 
growing at Oxford for twenty years, had 
changed the whole attitude of the 
younger generation towards literature 
and art. A fresher spirit was astir, 
and among the young men at Oxford 
who had shown promise in this sort of 
renaissance were Philip Stanhope Wors- 
ley, for example, and John Addington 
Symonds; while, in the very year of 



ROBERT BROWNHSTG 119 
Dramatis Personce, Professor Courthope, 
then an undergraduate, had won the 
Newdigate with an uncommonly natural 
and delicate poem upon Shakespeare's 
Tercentenary. At the same time Mr. 
Andrew Lang was a Freshman, and Pro- 
fessor Saintsbury in his last year. These 
are apparently trivial indications ; but 
a straw shows the way of the wind, 
and one of the first things that Brown- 
ing's publishers had to report was that 
his new book was proving unexpectedly 
popular both at Oxford and Cambridge. 

All my new cultivators [wrote Browning] 
are young men,— more than that, I observe that 
some of my old friends don't like at all the 
irruption of outsiders who rescue me from their 
sober and private approval, and take the words 
out of their mouths, which they always meant 
to say, and never did. 

The universities are not, of course, the 
hub of the universe ; but they are a great 
recruiting ground for literary reputa- 
tion. The young men who in 1864 were 
reading and praising Atalanta in Calydon, 



120 EOBEKT BKOWHIKG 
and "Babbi Ben Ezra" and " Abt 
Yogler," had three or four years later 
developed into the critics who gave such 
a thunderous welcome to Poems and 
Ballads and The Ring and the Book. 
The steady increase of readers for 
Dramatis Personal was a sign of the 
times. Browning was no longer in ad- 
vance of his generation : his hour was 
on the point of striking. And, in the 
stimulating fitness of things, he was at 
that moment engaged upon his great- 
est work. 

The story of that poem and its genesis 
is told, once and for all, with Browning's 
inimitable richness, in the overture to 
The Ping and the Book itself. One June 
day, among his last at Casa Guidi, he 
was strolling along the Piazza San 
Lorenzo, when a little book caught his 
eye upon a market-stall. It was an old, 
square, yellow volume, with crumpled 
vellum covers ; and, seeing that it was 
marked at eightpence, and dealt with a 



KOBERT BROWNING 121 

famous murder case, promising interest, 
he bought it on the spot, and started to 
read it then and there, among the piles 
of merchandise and the hubbub of mid- 
day traffic. He tells how he walked on, 
absorbed in the matter, reading, — 

Through street and street, 
At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge ; 
Till, by the time I stood at home again 
In Casa Guidi by Felice Church, 
Under the doorway where the black begins 
With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold, 
1 had mastered the contents, knew the whole 
truth. 

The psychology of crime had always a 
peculiar attraction for Browning. Mr. 
Kegan Paul, in his pleasant volume of 
Memories, tells of a dinner party at 
which he and Browning were present, 
when the conversation turned upon 
famous murder cases j and the company 
were surprised to find that the poet pos- 
sessed an elaborate knowledge of the 
details of evidence and motive in almost 
every important trial of the kind. The 



122 EOBERT BROWNIKG 
Franceschini case was, therefore, just 
the sort of thing to appeal to him ; and, 
though he seems to have offered the 
theme to other writers, it was always 
working in his brain, and within a year 
of his settling in London had taken 
some shape as a poem in his lively im- 
agination. He tells us himself that he 
was four years at work upon the actual 
manuscript ; but, before that, the whole 
development of the case, in its every 
aspect, had been churned over and over 
again in his mind and subjected to 
searching analysis. It is said that he 
read over the evidence eight times 
before he set out upon his own tenfold 
presentation of it. The result, as every 
one knows, is the wonderful poem of 
twenty thousand lines, against which so 
much criticism and eulogy have beaten 
eager wings. 

The Ring and the Booh might well be 
discussed in a volume of criticism as 
bulky as itself, and yet the question of 



KOBERT BROWNING 123 

its artistic justification would remain un- 
settled. That it is "tyrannously long 
without action, mercilessly voluble/' 
as Professor Saintsbury pronounces it, 
and at times irritatingly reiterative, 
every one but the fanatic must reluc- 
tantly admit. But that it contains pas- 
sages of supreme poetry, and that its 
entire scheme is founded upon the most 
delicate and subtle fabric of imaginative 
analysis, no one but a dullard will at- 
tempt to deny. Brevity was never one 
of Browning's virtues j and, in discuss- 
ing any of his poems, the trick of pro- 
lixity must be discounted at the outset. 
In The Ring and the Booh he deliberately 
seeks it : it is of the very essence of the 
idea that every hair should be split. 
One may quarrel with the method ; but 
it is absurd to suppose that the author 
was ignorant of his own devices ! The 
search for truth — truth of motive, the 
mainspring of action — became more and 
more the absorbing interest of his poetry • 



124 KOBERT BROWNING 
and in that search he adopted the habit of 
sifting every false aspect of the question, 
until there was left, like a precipitate, 
the simple grain of truth in the whole 
solution. This is the method of The 
Ring and the Book, applied, one need 
scarcely say, with an elaborate fidelity, 
of which Browning alone among the 
English poets of three hundred years 
was capable. In its course he re-creates 
characters only to dissolve them into 
their component emotions, suggests mo- 
tives only to probe their sincerity, and 
reveals himself more than anywhere else 
in his work the inspired master of 
human thought and action. 

With The Bing and the Book we reach 
the culminating point of Browning's 
poetic development. As we have seen, 
it is always with the individual soul that 
his philosophy is occupied. The salva- 
tion, the possibilities, of individual devel- 
opment, here and hereafter, are always 
his concern. But, while at first he 



EOBEET BBOWNIXG li 
turned to his own emotions for analysis, 
and imputed himself to his characters, he 
next, in the natural course of develop- 
ment, sought for subjects outside his own 
range of experience, and, as in "Bishop 
Blougram" or "Mr. Sludge," became 
definitely dramatic in method. Then, as 
the search for truth becomes more search- 
ing, he goes outside the individual, to 
arrive at the individual motive, and, as 
in The Ring and the Book, brings an array 
of characters, with an infinity of different 
side-lights and broken truths, to bear 
upon the one, isolated, individual act, 
and by the mixture of a vast alloy of 
falsehood completes, as it were, the 
golden ring of truth. The method may 
be casuistical: " falsehood, ' 1 as Profes- 
sor Dowden remarks, "seems almost 
more needful to the poet than truth ' ? ; 
but the wonderful verisimilitude of de- 
tail is justified by the clear and gleam- 
ing light in which the truth is event- 
ually revealed. 



126 ROBERT BROWNING 

After The Ring and the Booh Browning 
continued to employ the same method 
with something of the same wonderful 
result ; but it was already perfected, and 
he naturally never developed it further. 
Indeed, it is doubtful whether he ever 
again exhibited the same exquisite deli- 
cacy of treatment, or wrote with the 
same magnificence of diction, the same 
singular bursts of harmony. An analytic 
method such as this has its own perils. 
It is only a consummate genius that 
can bend it to true poetic uses. As 
Browning declined in years, the sub- 
tlety was apt to be obscured by sup- 
pression and unconscious crudity, the 
music to be abused by eccentricities of 
rhyme, which offend the ear and lend 
nothing to the effect. Red Cotton Night- 
cap Country and Pacchiarotto will always 
survive as literary curiosities j but it is 
doubtful whether they will long be 
read, either with pleasure or profit. 
The Browning of 1889 was substantially 



EOBERT BROWXING 12 



the Browning of 1868, with his manner 
solidified and his habit frozen. As a 
man ages, his characteristics either 
fade into nullity or assume emphatic 
angles. With a strong temperament the 
second alternative is almost inevitable, 
and it was so with Browning. Like 
Tennyson, he remained productive to the 
last ; but in neither case had the fresh 
fruit other than a reminiscent flavour 
of the old. Browning's creative course 
will always be marked in an ascending 
grade until the rich year of The Ring and 
the Book. With that year he took rank 
among the acknowledged great ; and for 
the rest of his life it was his pleasant 
privilege to reap the harvest of his 
labours, in the broad fields of universal 
recognition and close and intimate 
friendship. 



X. 

There were twenty years of active 
life left to Browning after The Ring and 
the Book ; and during those twenty years 
he published fourteen volumes of poetry. 
They were, indeed, in many senses, the 
fullest years of his life. He was con- 
scious, at last, of popularity and a 
public. He was a welcome and en- 
treated guest in the houses of a hundred 
friends. His pen was ceaselessly em- 
ployed in " giving the people of his 
best." And yet to the biographer these 
years afford but little colour. More that 
is of vital import may be concentrated 
in one twenty minutes of a man's life 
than in another twenty years ; and in 
the even tenour of a ripe and successful 
career there is less that appeals to the 
heart than in the broken record of early 
struggles and disappointments. The 
years that saw the publication of Balaus- 



EOBEET BROWNING 129 

Hon 1 s Adventure and Fifine at the Fair, 
of Bed Cotton Night-cap Country, Jocoseria, 
Ferishtah, and the rest, are chiefly inter- 
esting to a brief biography for their 
record of the friendships with which 
Browning's life was now so richly en- 
dowed. For it was now for the first 
time that he became a familiar figure in 
London society. Literary friendships 
he had always enjoyed, but even these, 
owing to his absence from England, 
chiefly in the form of correspondence. 
With his settlement in London he added 
daily to the circle of his acquaintances, 
and many different pictures of him are 
to be found in many books. They re- 
veal a temperament at once strong and 
lovable. To his friends Browning was 
indeed a very real friend, giving himself 
freely and without the slightest affecta- 
tion or self- consciousness. It was always 
said of him that no man was freer from 
the "pose of the poet." He had no 
literary tricks of tone or gesture. Those 



130 KOBERT BROWNING 
who had come out of the wilderness in 
the hope of seeing a poet were apt to be 
disappointed. They thought to find a 
prophet, enveloped in a mantle of 
mystery, and, lo ! a kindly, white- 
bearded gentleman, who spoke with 
knowledge of horsemanship and the 
opera. But those who were quicker in 
perception saw that his natural, unas- 
suming talk was really the fruit of abun- 
dant, encyclopaedic information, out of 
which Browning could equally discuss 
tides and shoals with a sailor, or shares 
and bubbles with a city magnate. He 
preferred, indeed, to talk to a man of 
the things the man himself could un- 
derstand. Nor was it any part of his 
energy to play mentor or guide to an 
open - mouthed bevy of school - girls. 
With Tennyson, Palgrave, and Glad- 
stone he would discuss Shakespeare and 
Latin verses ; but he knew all about 
the price of Pornic butter for the thrifty 
housewife. And in all such changes 



ROBERT BROWNING 131 

of standpoint lie was never patronizing 
nor petty. Whatever the topic, he 
discussed it with an intellectual vigour ; 
and the simplest girl felt at her ease 
with him instinctively. 

His dearest friends were always women, 
and at every pressing crisis in his life a 
woman was his confidante. At one time 
it was Miss Haworth, at another Miss 
Mitford, and, in his darkest hour of all, 
Miss Isa Blagden ; while he found in his 
own wife a friend whose sympathy ren- 
dered all other confidences needless for 
the space of fifteen years of absolute 
communion. The strongest and most 
masculine character will always be found 
to seek those complementary qualities of 
womanhood, for which a weekly or effem- 
inate nature can find substitutes in itself. 
The most completely "manly" men 
have always understood women best. 
This was precisely so with Browning. 
His letters to his women friends are full 
of sympathy, tact, and insight, — quali- 



132 EOBERT BROWNING 

ties in the absence of which anything 
like sincerity of intercourse is impossible 
between the sexes. He never made the 
mistake of writing or talking "down" 
to a woman. He had been privileged to 
share the aspirations of one woman of 
spiritual force, and knew well enough 
"the silent silver lights and darks un- 
dreamed of" which are revealed in most 
women's hearts for the man who can 
find the key to the gate. 

With the death of his wife, he lost 
a kindly critic, to whom his work owed 
much, even beyond the primal inspira- 
tion of sympathy. Turbid and troubled 
as much of her own work was, Mrs. 
Browning was fully alive to the risks of 
obscurity and suppression in her hus- 
band's. Her criticism and advice made 
always for lucidity ; and it will be ap- 
parent to any one who cares to examine 
carefully that the best and most vital of 
Browning's poetry was produced under 
her influence. In saying this, one does 



ROBERT BROWNING 133 

not forget the date of The Ring and the 
Boole, which was published seven years 
after her death, but is manifestly full of 
her memory. It was written with the 
afterglow of her influence full upon him, 
and breathes her inspiration in every 
part. But in his later works the ten- 
dency to difficulty of expression and 
crudity of music returned incorrigibly. 
It is somewhat of a paradox that the 
hardest of Browning's work was pro- 
duced after people had ceased to com- 
plain of his obscurity. During the last 
fifteen years of his life he had become a 
vogue. A Browning Society, which he 
regarded with kindliness not altogether 
free from apprehension, had arisen to 
expound him ; and to fail to admire him 
was now considered to argue lack of 
culture. The swing of the pendulum is 
from pole to pole. 

Among his friends were several to 
whom he looked for criticism. M. Mil- 
sand, the distinguished French critic, 



134 EOBEET BBOWNTNG 
who was the first to introduce his poetry 
to a Parisian audience, was perhaps the 
most trusted. He read the proofs of all 
Browning's later volumes, and made 
many helpful suggestions. Miss Anne 
Thackeray (Mrs. Bichmond Bitchie) was 
often with Browning abroad, and, be- 
sides suggesting the title of Bed Cotton 
Night- cap Country, was a close confidante 
of his literary plans during many sunny 
afternoons at St. Aubin. For during 
these summer holidays Browning was 
continually at work, and much of his 
closest application was left to the hours 
when he should have been at rest. 

In London his activity was remark- 
able. He rose early, and invariably 
found a pile of letters upon his table. 
Correspondence was never a pleasure to 
him, for he disliked the exercise of writ- 
ing. But so punctilious was his cour- 
tesy that by the time he had finished 
answering his morning letters he was 
often too tired to take up his more 



ROBERT BROWNING 135 

serious work. The same courtesy and 
consideration were shown in his welcome 
to visitors. He had none of that inac- 
cessibility behind which great men have 
been wont to protect their freedom. 
Mrs. Ritchie relates the incident of one 
morning call, when she found every 
room in the house at Warwick Crescent 
occupied by different visitors awaiting 
audience, and Browning himself pale 
and exhausted from the effort of con- 
versation with well-meaning enthusiasts. 
Of an afternoon he was an assiduous 
attendant at concerts. His friend Miss 
Egerton Smith used to call for him in 
her carriage 5 and for years, Mrs. Orr 
tells us, the two friends scarcely missed 
a single musical " event" of any im- 
portance. In the evening he was a con- 
stant diner-out ; and yet during the 
greater part of his residence in London 
not a day passed without his adding 
something to his poetry, working slowly, 
it is true, but with infinite pains, pro- 



136 ROBERT BROWNING 
during, perhaps, a single page of manu- 
script in a morning's work. 

In his poetry and in the society of his 
friends he seems to have found consid- 
erable happiness. As all who met him 
agree, Browning was at heart an opti- 
mist. He had a comfortable gift of 
adapting himself to circumstances, of 
accepting gladly what life had to give 
him, of conrpromising with life, in 
short. In his own philosophy, as in his 
poetry, he was content to regard life 
as the exercise ground of faculties which 
should be more fully realised in some 
ultimate existence elsewhere. He was 
always consciously fostering his talents 
for their fuller, mysterious development. 
And so he appears to us, moving through 
the shadows of advancing age, — blithe, 
contented, self-contained, a man of in- 
finite sympathy and unflagging energy. 

Miss Arabel Barrett died in the year 
of The Ring and the Book, and the poet's 
father had then been dead two years. 



ROBERT BROWNING 137 
After her father's death, Miss Browning 
came to live with her brother j and her 
kindliness and tact did much to brighten 
his home. More than all, his son's dis- 
tinctions as an artist were a continual 
pride to him ; and it may be truly said 
of Browning that the closing days of his 
life were not ouly illumined by honours 
from without, but also sustained and 
heartened from within by the unfailing af- 
fection of those who were dearest to him. 
In 1887 his son married, and he him- 
self moved from Warwick Crescent to 
De Vere Gardens. He took keen inter- 
est in the arrangement of his new home, 
but those who knew him best noticed 
that the old energy was no longer ca- 
pable of such prolonged nights. During 
the next two years his vigour slowly 
abated, and he began to think of settling 
for the end of his life in a home that 
should remind him of its beginning. It 
had long been a cherished ambition with 
him to secure a house at Asolo, and 



138 KOBEKT BEOWKING 
there was a half-finished building in the 
precincts of the castle there, which he 
particularly desired to complete and to 
name "Pippa's Tower." Negotiations 
were opened, and languished. Brown- 
ing went to Venice in the November of 
1889, and was daily expecting a settle- 
ment of the affair. The delay worried 
him, and towards the end of the month 
he caught a severe chill. Bronchitis set 
in, and he sank steadily. On Thursday, 
the 12th of December, at about ten 
o'clock at night, he died. His gentle 
optimism stood by him to the last. He 
continually assured the watchers by his 
bed that he was not suffering. He knew 
that he was dying, and he met the 
knowledge without fear. 



I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
forebore, 

And bade me creep past. 



ROBERT BROWNING 139 

For sudden the worst turns the best to the 
brave, 
The black minute's at end, 
And the elements' rage, the fiend- voices that 
rave, 
Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
pain, 
Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest ! 



He had felt — without caring very 
greatly, however — that he should like 
to lie by his wife's side : but the nation 
thought otherwise. On the last day of 
the year he was buried in Poets' Corner 
in Westminster Abbey, and rests there 
to-day, before the Chaucer monument, 
side by side with Alfred Tennyson. ' l In 
poetry illustrious and consummate, in 
friendship noble and sincere," the great 
twin - brethren of Victorian poetry are 
united once more in death. 



XI. 

It is a commonplace of criticism that 
for the first fifty years of his life Brown- 
ing was in advance of his age. But a 
platitude, often repeated, begins to lose 
its significance ; and perhaps we hardly 
realise precisely how it was that Brown- 
ing's poetry was so long in finding recog- 
nition. It is said, and repeated with 
iteration, that he is obscure j and, in- 
deed, as he himself remarked, he did 
not profess to provide the kind of poetry 
which should serve as a substitute for a 
cigar or a game of cards. But obscurity 
is a permanent defect. It does not wear 
off with the friction of time ; and, if 
Browning's Men and Women were obscure 
in 1855, they would be equally obscure 
in 1900. We are now, however, gen- 
erally agreed that very little of his 
poetry is so involved but that an ordi- 
nary intellect can unravel it by ordinary 



ROBERT BROWNING 141 

exercise ; and there must have been 
something beyond subtlety of thought 
to estrange the readers who were already 
beginning to honour Carlyle. What, 
then, was the quality in which Brown- 
ing lay outside the habits of his own 
time, — the quality which kept him for 
more than thirty years at work before he 
began to have anything like a consider- 
able following ? It would seem to have 
been almost entirely a question of method, 
and not a question of thought or of 
u message" at all. Browning's " mes- 
sage, ' ' as we shall presently see, is essen- 
tially simple and direct. It is concerned 
entirely with wide and open problems 
of life. It may be made to move hand 
in hand with orthodox religion. It con- 
tains nothing to repel or even to aston- 
ish. It is a necessary part of any 
spiritual system whatever, of every 
conceivable school of philosophy which 
leads anywhere beyond the abyss of 
despair. But his method was another 



142 ROBERT BROWJSTNG 
matter. It was new and disturbing, 
intricate and curious ; and it was intro- 
duced into poetry at a time when litera- 
ture, having just recovered from the 
fervours of the French Revolution, had 
settled down again into a natural calm, 
in the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. 
Now, although the pursuit of the spirit 
of beauty is implicit in all Browning's 
work, he had very little care for abstract 
principles apart from their direct rela- 
tion to humanity. Mankind, and espe- 
cially the individual man as the micro- 
cosm, was the entire concern of his 
poetry ; and, in order to arrive at the 
truth of all general principles as they 
affected man, it was the essence of his 
method to analyse the emotions of the 
individual, to dissect the impulse, and 
from the isolated example to proceed to 
the generalisation. The method re- 
quired complexity, if it was to be in the 
least degree effectual ; and the com- 
plexity demanded concentrated atten- 
tion in the reader who was to follow it. 



EOBEET BEOWKIKG 143 
The public taste for poetry in 1833 was 
far below the taste for prose. Byron's 
vogue had already waned j Keats and 
Shelley were silent in death. The field 
was given over to moonlight - verse 
melodists ; to Moore and the metres of 
sugar and tinsel keepsalce verse. The 
early Victorian reader expected poetry 
to entertain him, to appeal mildly to 
the sentiments of parted love and as- 
piring poverty. He had just emerged 
from the barrel-organ tenderness of 
Thomas Haynes Bayly, and was rising to 
the flights of Eliza Cook and the Hon. 
Mrs. Norton. He was puzzled, baffled, 
annoyed by Browning's brusque and 
vigorous lines. He resented his demand 
upon the brain, and decided at once that 
such poetry was unintelligible. 

And yet what could be simpler than 
the direct theme of almost all Brown- 
ing's poetry, — his "message," if we 
must use the word that, having been 
thumped into every pulpit- cushion of 



144 ROBERT BROWNING 
Evangelicisin, is now a little dusty and 
threadbare ! Browning took the human 
soul as the unit of humanity ; and he 
took it as he found it, let and hindered 
by the slough of its mortality. He 
found it bounded in a nutshell, but 
trembling with the fire of boundless 
ambition. It was too great, too strong 
for its surroundings : the world was not 
worthy of it ; but the sphere of its activ- 
ity was still the world itself. Clearly, 
so spiritual a fire was not destined to be 
quenched in death. The life which we 
know was, as he saw it, a preparation 
for some further, fuller existence, in 
which the faculties would be no longer 
depressed, but every unfulfilled impulse 
would burst into fruition. Life, then, 
must be concentrated upon the emotions : 
every enthusiasm must be given play ; 
but the play of all must be subordinated 
by a sense of the impossibility of realis- 
ing the true power of the faculties in 
this life. The present career can only 



EOBEET BROWNING 145 

be one of failure : the man who thinks 
he has succeeded is indeed a castaway ; 
for he has lost his sense of the possibili- 
ties of his own soul. But in high failure 
lies the true success of well-directed 
effort. So in "Rabbi Ben Ezra" : — 

Not on the vulgar mass 

Called "work," must sentence pass, 

Things done, that took the eye and had the 

price ; 
O'er which, from level stand, 
The low world laid its hand, 
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a 

trice : 

But all the world's coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb, 
So passed in making up the main account ; 
All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the 
man's amount: 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 

Into a narrow act, 

Fancies that broke through language and es- 
caped ; 

All 1 could never be, 

All, men ignored in me, 

This I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
pitcher shaped. 



146 EOBEET BBOWNING 

So, too, of course, in that splendid paean 

of exalted failure, — "A Grammarian's 

Funeral 



>> 



That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it: 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit: 
This high man, aiming at a million, 

Misses an unit. 

The same idea animates his poems upon 
the arts, which, since the artist's aim is 
always ideal and inaccessible, are para- 
bles, so to speak, of the higher life. 
"Andrea del Sarto" is the picture of a 
painter who, being without fault in 
small technicalities, blameless to the 
smaller critic, is ruined in the higher 
and spiritual expression. He looks at a 
picture by the young Eaphael, can see 
faults in its drawing, faults which he 
could remedy, but knows that the soul 
of the work is beyond him. 

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 
But all the play, the insight and the stretch- 
out of me, out of me ! 



ROBERT BROWNING 147 

So in u Abt Vogler" the musician hears 
the melody die away, and feels that in 
power of permanent expression he is far 
behind the builder, who rears some mag- 
nificent cathedral for all time. But to 
both the painter and the musician the 
same consolation returns, bringing a 
sense of future development, — u Other 
heights in other lives, God willing." 
For Andrea, — 

What would one have ? 
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more 

chance — 
Four great walls in the new Jerusalem, 
Meted on each side by the angel's reed, 
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo, and me 
To cover. 



For the musician, — 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
shall exist ; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor 
good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
for the melodist, 
When eternity affirms the conception of an 
hour. 



148 EOBERT BKOWKTNG 

The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
earth too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
bard ; 
Enough that He heard it once : we shall hear 
it by and by. 



There, shorn of all external concomi- 
tants, is the simple, direct, eternal " mes- 
sage " of Browning's poetry. "He ap- 
proaches the real world, ' ' says Professor 
Dowden, — putting the whole discussion 
into a sentence, — "and takes it as it is 
and for what it is, yet at the same time 
penetrates it with sudden spiritual fire." 
The doctrine is as old as Plato, and has 
reappeared in a score of different forms ; 
it is inseparable from the teaching of the 
Hebrew prophets ; it has thrown its 
roots into the fabric of Christianity. 
There is nothing in it obscure, difficult, 
or remote. It is the elementary doctrine 
of the continuity of energy. But in 
Browning it assumes a hundred facets, 



EOBERT BROWNING 149 
which take the light so differently that 
we get a perpetual sense of novelty and 
change. As each new character is dis- 
played, with amazing subtlety of sympa- 
thy and insight, the eye is almost dazzled 
with the flashing of side-lights ; and the 
one, bright, u gem-like flame" at the 
heart of things is occasionally sub- 
merged. Penetrate the outward scintil- 
lations, however ; and it is always found 
to be burning steadily and clear. To 
realise himself in all his emotions and 
aspirations, to grow into form and beauty 
like the clay upon the potter's wheel, — 
that is the whole duty of man. 

Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 
That metaphor! and feel 

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— 
Thou, to whom fools propound, 
When the wine makes its round, 
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, 
seize to-day ! " 

Fool ! all that is, at all, 
Lasts ever, past recall; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 



150 EOBEET BROWNING 

What entered into thee, 
That was, is, and shall be : 

Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay 
endure. 

It has been objected against Bro wr- 
ing's claim to greatness that he did but 
little to reflect the aims and aspirations 
of his own countrymen, that he was very 
little moved by the stream of events, and 
that his historical value is affected by 
his lack of immediate value to his time. 
It is true, indeed, that Browning was at 
no time a " topical " poet; and much 
of his long unpopularity was, no doubt, 
due to his disinclination to come down 
into the market-place, with his singing 
robes about him, and make great ballads 
of the day to the chorus of the crowd. 
But there is a higher part even than that 
of a national poet ; and Browning is, in 
a very real sense, the poet, not of Eng- 
land alone, but of the world. His atti- 
tude to men and life was never distraught 
by petty interests of blood or party : the 



ROBERT BROWNING 151 
one claim upon him was the claim of 
humanity. He was a man, and nothing 
that pertained to man was foreign to 
himself. What will be his final place 
in the long array of English poetry it 
is still impossible to say. It took long 
for him to come into his own, and even 
then many outside developments helped 
him. We think ourselves to-day far 
wiser than our grandparents : we fancy, 
perhaps, that, if Pauline had come to one 
of us fresh from the press, we should 
have hailed it forthwith as a work of 
coming genius. All this may be, and 
yet the last word will always remain to 
be said. Time brings in, not only re- 
venges, but redresses ; and it is probable 
that Robert Browning is not even yet 
appreciated as he will be by our chil- 
dren's children. But even now we know 
him for much that he is, — the subtlest, 
strongest master of human aspiration, 
save only Shakespeare, that has ever 
dignified the English language with 



152 ROBERT BROWNING 
poetry j a man who felt for men with 
all the intensity of a great, unselfish 
heart ; a genius crowned with one guer- 
don which genius cannot always boast, — 
a pure and noble life. Standing in the 
twilight shades of the whispering Abbey, 
in that sacred corner full of haunting 
melodies and immortal yearnings, we 
may gladly feel that, however long and 
weary was the neglect of him, he is now, 
at last, gathered to his peers. 

Lofty designs must close in like effects: 

Loftily lying, 
Leave him,— still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

The fullest bibliography of Eobert 
Browning's writings is that issued in 
1896-97 by Mr. Thomas J. Wise. But, 
as this is printed for subscribers only, it 
is best to refer the ordinary reader to 
the excellent Browning bibliography 
which is appended to the later editions 
of Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Handbook to the 
Works of Eobert Browning. Students 
who desire full information should con- 
sult it carefully. For those who wish 
to enlarge their familiarity with Brown- 
ing's life without intimate research, and 
who seek clear and simple criticism of 
his work, the following books will be of 
particular value : — 

The Life and Letters of Eobert 
Browning. By Mrs. Sutherland Orr. 
Second edition : in one volume. (Lon- 
don, 1891.) 

The Life of Eobert Browning. By 
William Sharp. " Great Writers Se- 



154 BIBLIOGEAPHY 

ries." (A New Edition.) (London, 

1897.) 

Egbert Browning : Personalia. By 
Edmund Gosse. (Boston and London, 
1890.) 

Critical Kit-Kats. By Edmund Gosse. 
"The Sonnets from the Portuguese." 
(London, 1896.) 

Eecords of Tennyson, Euskin, and 
Browning. By Anne Eitchie. (Lon- 
don, 1892.) 

An Introduction to the Study of 
Browning. By Arthur Symons. (Lon- 
don, 1886.) 

The Poets and Poetry of the Cen- 
tury. Article on Eobert Browning by 
Dr. F. J. Furnivall. (London, 1892.) 

Studies in Literature. By Edward 
Dowden, LL.D. Article on Tennyson 
and Browning. (London, 1887. ) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 

New Studies in Literature. By 
Edward Dowden, LL.D. Article on 
"Bordello." (London, 1895.) 

Corrected Impressions. By Profes- 
sor George Saintsbury. Article on 
Browning. (London, 1895.) 

A Handbook to the Works of Rob- 
ert Browning. By Mrs. Sutherland 
Orr. (London, 1886.) 



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